Students at Minchau Elementary School in southeast Edmonton will be going back to class at a different school on Monday due to extensive flooding over the winter break.
“Almost the entire school, with the exception of the gymnasium and the portable classroom, is under about two inches of water,” said Lorne Parker, assistant superintendent of infrastructure with the Edmonton Public School Board (EPSB).
“That means that we have to remove carpet, some flooring, other fixtures… to repair the damage.”
All 300 students from Minchau School will instead go to class at Jan Reimer School in the Orchards while the repair work is underway. The district believes the repairs will take 10 to 12 weeks.
“We would not be doing this unless we were forced into this situation,” Parker said, adding Jan Reimer is equipped to handle the extra students.
“Jan Reimer School was chosen because it can be configured quickly to accommodate students and staff from Minchau School.”
Parker said the school board is in the process of notifying parents. Kids who walk to school will be picked up at Minchau at 8 a.m. and bussed over to Jan Reimer School. Those students will then be dropped off at Minchau after school between 3:45 p.m. and 3:50 p.m.
Students who already take the bus to Minchau will be rerouted to Jan Reimer. Pickup and drop off locations will be the same.
Flooding at the school happened on Jan. 1 and was discovered on Jan. 2, Parker said. Minchau Elementary School is one of 11 Edmonton Public Schools that experienced flooding earlier this week after a drastic warm-up in the city.
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The temperature in Edmonton rose from about -27 C Monday morning to -2 C at around 4 a.m. Tuesday. The temperature swing led to burst pipes across the city.
READ MORE: Edmonton pipes burst in schools, hotels as temperature rises
On Tuesday, the EPSB said some of the water damage at its schools came from both internal pipe issues and external fire hydrant problems.
Parker said all of the other flooded schools will be open to students as usual on Monday morning. Minchau was the hardest hit by the flooding, but J. Percy Page High School and Jackson Heights School also suffered quite a bit of damage.
“This is an unprecedented cold snap across the city,” Parker said. “These are certainly unforeseen circumstances. We have alarms and checks on our schools but we don’t have alarms on every portion of a pipe. This is an example where a pipe failed and it was caught fairly quickly but by the time you catch those, quite extensive damage has already been done.”
Both gymnasium floors at J. Percy Page High School will have to be replaced. Parker said the floors have already been torn out but the repair will take several weeks.
“That won’t happen overnight. That’s a fairly extensive undertaking because the wood has to come in and be acclimatized to the school and so that will take approximately six weeks.”
The school board is working with the principal of J. Percy Page to find accommodations for physical education classes, Parker said.
Maintenance workers originally thought the gym floor at Jackson Heights would also have to be replaced, but Parker said they will be able to salvage it.
Crews have been working around the clock to get affected schools ready for Monday morning.
“It’s certainly a massive undertaking for our maintenance crew to take on this number of incidents at once,” Parker said.
The damage at Minchau is estimated to be in excess of $500,000, Parker said.
“We are still preparing the estimates across the district for the other damage.”
From September to December, Jan Reimer School was also acting as a “school within a school,” Parker said. About 400 kids who will now go to the newly opened Shauna May Seneca School were attending class at Jan Reimer School until construction on their school was finished.
For more information on the plan for Minchau students, visit the EPSB’s website.
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