District officials detail damage to schools following earthquake; update status of schools still in question

PALMER — The Mat Su Borough School Board held a work session with staff on Wednesday to address concerns over the earthquake damaged facilities and how the Mat-Su Borough School District would move forward in assessment and repair of schools.

Thursday morning, district officials updated the status of a handful of schools that have remained in question. Staff members are now slated to return Dec. 13 and students Dec. 14, pending a final inspection, at Colony High, Colony Middle and Finger Lake Elementary. Houston High will be open to staff on Monday, with students returning Dec. 12. Houston Middle sustained the most damage, and will be closed for the remainder of the school year. The district has moved Houston Middle students and staff to Houston High. Staff members report Monday, and students return Dec. 13.

The MSBSD has been working since Friday to update parents and students on the status of school buildings.

District officials have been updating its website daily with news on which buildings are safe and which aren’t.

Big Lake Elementary, Dena’ina Elementary, Goose Bay Elementary, Redington, Wasilla Middle and Wasilla High are now closed to staff until Monday and students Tuesday.

The Mat-Su Central School Wasilla office is open to staff members Monday and staff Tuesday, but the Palmer office is closed until further notice.

Staff in about two-dozen schools returned to their buildings on Wednesday to prepare for the arrival of students on Thursday.

That list includes Academy Charter, American Charter Academy, Birchtree Charter, Burchell High, Butte Elementary, Mat-Su Career Tech, Cottonwood Creek Elementary, Fronteras, Iditarod, Machetanz Elementary, Mat-Su Day School, Mat-Su Middle College, Palmer High, Palmer Junior Middle, Pioneer Peak, Shaw Elementary, Sherrod Elementary, Snowshoe Elementary, Sutton Elementary, Swanson Elementary, Tanaina Elementary, Teeland Middle, Twindly Bridge Charter and Valley Pathways.

“We are projecting,” MSBSD Superintendent Dr. Monica Goyette said. “I mentioned those status’ continue to change almost hourly, but certainly daily, so there are things that may come up or be revealed that might cause a school not able to be occupied or have students in it.”

Goyette thanked teachers and staff, who worked through the earthquake to make sure that all of the students were safe. Out of 47 schools and 19,000 students, no major injuries were reported. The school district suffered approximately $100,000 in damages just to technology, and assessments in some schools are ongoing.

“They took care of our kids before they took care of themselves,” Goyette said. “This was an emergency, but we are not in crisis.”

Mike Brown and Tony Weese went over the recovery efforts and assessments of buildings that are not safe. The school district mobilized almost immediately, and many qualified staff worked 16- to 18-hour days through the weekend. Upon assessment of damaged ceilings in many schools, Brown began searching for ceiling tile. Brown authorized the purchase of all of the ceiling tile that they could get their hands on.

KNIK ELEMENTARY

According to MSBSD Safety and Emergency Preparedness Manager Steve Paine, the janitor at Knik Elementary had just stepped out of the gym at 8:29 a.m. on Friday. The dropped ceiling in the gym fell almost in entirety, and a new design will be put in to prevent that from happening should there be another large earthquake in the future. The silver lining to the partial opening at Knik Elementary without the gym is that it shares a campus with Goose Bay Elementary, whose gym is safe. Students at Knik and Goose Bay Elementary schools will return to school together, not staggered, to keep the morale up.

COLONY MIDDLE

Colony Middle School had one-third of the ceiling tile in the whole building fall, to go along with cracks in the cinderblock walls. CMS was one of the schools toured by Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, and Gov. Mike Dunleavy.

COLONY HIGH SCHOOL

Many schools in MSBSD are constructed with cinderblock walls, or CMU (concrete masonry units). The Colony High School Gym suffered a large fissure in the CMU gym wall, which bears some load. The pillars in the front of the school connect to the wall with structural steel, and when the pillars moved, they caused a fissure in the gym wall. Officials have looked at blocking off the front entrance, but that has not yet been determined. The track that runs along the gym has sunk due to the wall failure and the stairwell has been compromised.

HOUSTON MIDDLE SCHOOL

The worst damage suffered to a building in the Mat-Su Borough was to Houston Middle, which not only had ceiling tiles fall, but major cracks along walls. Weese explained how the CMU units were stacked in HMS and connected. The HMS building was built in 1985, when codes were not to the standard they are now. The CMU wall in HMS is not staggered so that if one block fails, the load can be dispersed among other blocks. The CMU walls in HMS are aligned, one on top of the other. Reinforcing steel, or rebar, runs through the cinder blocks and is filled. The problem with the way HMS was built is that the walls connect to structural steel that bears load of the roof. Every connection between structural steel and the rebar failed, and the cinderblocks fell. There are a number of options for the future of HMS. The fixes that have been proposed are to remove the section of the roof structure to place a footing on the slab and put a new steel column. The second option is to carbon fiber wrap the split walls.

“If you rebuild a disastrous building you still have a rebuilt disastrous building,” School Board Member Ole Larson said. Assessments of facilities, particularly HMS, are ongoing and could take months to conclude, according to Assistant Superintendent Luke Fulp. If proposed fixes were to be constructed at HMS, the construction itself could last up to 10 months. Much of these decisions are also based on insurance adjusters. MSBSD officials met with insurance adjusters on Tuesday, and FEMA representatives took tours of damaged facilities, which is another proposed funding source. FEMA funds do not arrive quickly, and require a set of criteria to be granted. FEMA funds are to be spent on debris removal and emergency protective measures. Ben Howard, currently the principal at HMS, will be principal of the HHS building when it houses 778 students when the doors open. The school district is already planning to move all of its available portables on site to HHS. Houston High has 350 students on its own, and 388 HMS students will have to attend class at the HHS building. The school was only built to support 550 students, and so field trip options will be available for the remainder of the semester until portables arrive.