Greensburg Salem eyes fall reopening for water-damaged middle school classrooms

Greensburg Salem School District plans to have three middle school classrooms with water-damaged carpeting back in use in time for fall instruction.

But it’s expected to take longer to restore the district administration offices that also were soaked in mid-April when a water fountain on the school’s second floor started leaking.

Since the leak and damage were discovered on the morning of April 17, a Monday, the administration wing of the school has been sealed off. Affected office staff and classes held on the second floor, above the offices, were relocated elsewhere in the building.

“We’re going to start as soon as we can on the second-floor classrooms, redoing just the flooring,” district superintendent Ken Bissell said . “We want to make sure those are ready on Aug. 24.

“The offices are going to take a lot more time. That’s where the bulk of the damage was done.”

The floors, walls and technology in the first-floor district administrative, business and human resources offices were damaged when a cooling coil on the water fountain above failed and leaked, according to Bissell.

“We have to get architects to take a look at how we’re going to restructure the office space,” he said. “We might be into early winter getting that downstairs area fully done.”

The central office staff are “relocated in different spaces,” said Bissell. “It’s not ideal, but people are kind of settling into those spaces a little bit. Sooner than later, we want to get them back to some normalcy.”

An estimated cost of the restoration wasn’t available. Bissell said school officials were waiting on information from the district’s insurance adjuster.