Nicholas County's new schools superintendent said Thursday that three of the county's schools - Summersville Middle, Richwood Middle and Richwood High - won't be able to reopen their buildings in time for the Aug. 19 start of classes there and that she doesn't know if they can be reopened at all.
Donna Burge-Tetrick said she's aiming to have all three schools' students start on schedule, but she's still working on how to accomplish that. She noted that the plan could include portable classrooms and/or sharing of other school facilities between two separate schools' students, like how Kanawha County's public school system is temporarily sending displaced Herbert Hoover High students to Elkview Middle.
Burge-Tetrick's revelation that three more West Virginia school buildings won't reopen on time in the wake of the late-June flooding continues to reverse the prior notion - based on other school officials' past statements - that all flood-affected schools were likely to start classes on schedule for the upcoming school year.
Kanawha schools Superintendent Ron Duerring had said it was his goal to open all four of Kanawha's flood-damaged schools on time for the Aug. 8 start date that applies to almost all Kanawha public schools.
Last week, though, Duerring revealed that Hoover students would be temporarily attending Elkview Middle in the afternoons, while the Elkview Middle students would attend in the morning, with this alternating schedule continuing until portables are delivered onto Elkview Middle's football field for Hoover students to use.
On Wednesday, he announced that the school system couldn't rebuild the Hoover building, which got six to seven feet of water and suffered damage equaling 70 percent of its appraised value. He also announced that the district will build a new high school in the area.
School officials also revealed at that meeting that a second Kanawha school building, Clendenin Elementary, also wouldn't open on time, and that students there would be moved into six to eight portables placed in front of Bridge Elementary.
Kanawha schools officials said it's still unclear if Clendenin Elementary will reopen at all, and Duerring said he's still awaiting a Federal Emergency Management Agency report on that school.
Burge-Tetrick said she's still awaiting reports from FEMA damage assessments on her schools, as well.
Jimmy Gianato, West Virginia's homeland security and emergency management director, has said that, under National Flood Insurance Program rules, if a building is damaged greater than 50 percent of its appraised value, any repair or replacement has to be up to current codes. That would substantially raise the cost to fix Hoover, Summersville Middle, Richwood Middle and Richwood High, by requiring that they be built to be safe from future flooding.
Two weeks ago, Richwood Middle Principal Gene Collins said his school had received the most damage of any school in Nicholas, but that he expected even it would open on time for classes to start Aug. 19.
He said the school, which serves a little fewer than 300 students, did suffer heavy damage, with an average of $20,000 in losses per classroom, with things like textbooks and technology ruined.
He said the damage to the choir room, which lost all of its sound and lighting systems, raised the average classroom loss amount.
Jack Cole, a physical education teacher, said the band room, art room and gym, where his office is, are in the same part of the school, facing the Cherry River. He said the water was more than 5 feet deep in his office, a tree fell through a big window looking into the art room and the art teacher's desk was found in downtown Richwood.
Burge-Tetrick said Charleston-based ZMM Architects & Engineers has determined that Richwood Middle has $1 million to $1.5 million in structural damage and that Summersville Middle, which serves a little more than 500 students, has more than $500,000 in structural damage. The firm said two classrooms at each school are unsafe for students to be in. She said those structural damage estimates don't include damage to building contents, like ceiling tiles and electrical systems.
"Now we're at the point where we don't have time to get schools ready, and because we don't have time to get schools ready, we have to have an option," she said.
Nicholas' school board met at 7 p.m. Thursday at Cherry River Elementary, 190 Riverside Drive, Richwood, where she said the flooding issues were discussed but no decisions were made.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.