As the clock ticked down to today's openings for most schools in Kanawha County, school system employees were working overtime on regular maintenance projects, a process made more difficult this year as workers also made repairs to schools damaged in the late June floods.
Terry Hollandsworth, maintenance director for Kanawha schools, said his department has put on hold some projects that weren't essential, like painting hallways and repairing some sidewalks.
"We focused on the things that were critical," Hollandsworth said. "The niceties that we would have loved to do for the schools are kind of put on the back burner."
Since late June, much of the school system's attention has been focused on two flood-damaged schools, Bridge Elementary and Elkview Middle. School officials announced Saturday that those schools would open on Wednesday, two days later than the rest of the county.
Crews continued last week with repairs to air conditioning units at some Kanawha schools, but parts of some schools will still be without AC at the start of the school year.
"We continued to work on air conditioning systems, while it did impact our time spent on preventive maintenance," Hollandsworth wrote in an email to the Gazette-Mail. "We did continue with repairs. There will be some rooms without AC in some of the schools. But whole schools will not be without AC."
Kanawha County has the earliest start date of any county in the state. School board member Pete Thaw voted against the school system's early start time partly because of the poor condition of its AC units. Thaw said the school system has spent millions of dollars to fix its aged air conditioning system.
"I'm very disturbed, and I was disturbed before this started," Thaw said Friday. "This problem existed before this crisis started. We have no business putting children in the schools the first of August."
The June 23 floods totaled two schools in Kanawha County - Hoover High School and Clendenin Elementary School. Hollandsworth said crews have been working 12-hour days, seven days a week lately, to repair Elkview Middle and Bridge Elementary, where students from Hoover and Clendenin will start the year.
Hollandsworth had said on Friday that Elkview Middle and Bridge Elementary would open on time, before Saturday's announcement that they wouldn't be ready.
Kanawha schools Superintendent Ron Duerring said Bridge Elementary and Elkview Middle still need time to move in more furniture and to get ready for an increase in the number of students at each facility.
"We just needed a couple of more days to finalize and finish everything up," Duerring said Saturday. "Just putting the finishing touches on it. It took a little bit more time."
Students from Hoover will temporarily attend classes at Elkview Middle School before portables are set up for classes on the Elkview football field.
Clendenin Elementary students will attend classes at Bridge Elementary until portables can be installed in Bridge's parking lot and yard. The portables are in the engineering and bidding stages now and should be in place in the next 30 to 40 days, said Charles Wilson, director of facility planning for the school system.
Crews will have to elevate the portables so they're out of the flood plain, and install covered walkways.
"We have to distribute water, sewer, electric, security, bells - all the things that make a school," Wilson said. "The goal is to get these in place and get the fire marshal's approval to bring students in and get some normalcy."
Wilson said many projects that his department focused on - such as repairs to a pedestrian bridge at Hayes Middle School - were already under contract when the flood hit and were not delayed.
Kanawha County Schools employs 93 maintenance workers and 30 custodians, Hollandsworth said. Contractors were hired to make repairs to air conditioning units at Riverside and Capital high schools, he said. Earlier this summer, bus drivers and school cooks pitched in to clean out mud from schools, Hollandsworth said.
"Everyone's doing what they could to help," Hollandsworth said.
He said overtime hours for the work would be billed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Hollandsworth said crews were waxing floors at Bridge Elementary until 3 a.m. Friday morning. Teachers had been able to get back into Elkview Middle School for a few days last week.
Hollandsworth credited board members, staff and community members for helping getting the schools up and ready.
"The board members and employees, management team and local contractors helped us out," he said. "If it hadn't been for the community members and the prayers of everyone, we wouldn't be here, where we are today."
Reach Lori Kersey at lori.kersey@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1240 or follow @LoriKerseyWV on Twitter.