Reconstruction has started at flood-ravaged Meeker Elementary School, and it’s going to look nothing like it used to

March 20--Save for the posters in the cafeteria reminding students to eat their fruits and veggies, there's almost nothing left in the Meeker Elementary building that suggests it was a school.

The building is a husk of what it was before Nov. 6, 2017, when an early-morning flood forced its closure and sent students and teachers to a temporary home at Generations Church.

But Greeley-Evans School District 6 took a big step to getting Meeker back earlier this week, when reconstruction work began. That work is scheduled to be completed by the start of the 2018-19 school year.

Along with the reconstruction comes a new look.

"We're rethinking the whole purpose of the space," district spokeswoman Theresa Myers said.

Indeed, Meeker will have a layout unlike any other school in the district, a central hub of art and computer labs and a "maker studio" where students can do STEM projects, all accessible and connectible through sliding-glass doors. The library will be an open space in a hallway between that hub and classrooms, and each classroom will have its own library as well.

Many classrooms will also be connected by sliding-glass doors, enabling teaches to open them and teach classes together. The building will have far more natural light than it used to. And they gym floor will no longer be carpeted.

Meeker also will have added security measures that the building, which was finished in 1975, didn't. There wasn't a clear line of sight from the entrance to the front office, for example. The redesigned building will have a vestibule entrance, where visitors enter one set of doors, then have to be buzzed in through a second set of doors to enter the main office, which will be the only access point to the rest of the school.

"It's gonna be more conducive to what (our students) need," Myers said.

Meeker struggled the year before the flood. It fell to the Colorado Department of Education's second-lowest accreditation rating, "priority improvement." That put it on the state's five-year accountability clock. If it stays in the bottom rating for five years, the state board of education will intervene by taking Meeker over, turning it into a charter school, bringing in an outside agency to run it or making the district revamp it as a school of innovation.

Accreditation ratings for the 2017-18 school year won't be out for several months. Myers said the district is "hopeful" Meeker will make it off the clock, but added the flood and the move to a church has been a "huge disruption" for students and staff.

Students missed three days of school after the flood. Teachers were given an hour and a half to enter the ravaged school and gather whatever supplies they could. More supplies have come through donation drives and book fairs. Myers said the redesigned school should give students the stability they need.

"If it's going to be down like this," Myers said, "we might as well make it more usable."

Now that the building has been gutted, crews will start laying out the floors, plumbing and electrical lines, said Monty Ulmer, the construction project manager. His crews are on a tight deadline to get everything finished by mid-August, but he said they're prepared to work nights and weekends to get it done.

None of this will be cheap. The demolition and construction will cost $5.5 million. That's on top of $464,150 to charter buses to get students to their temporary school at Generations Church, $314,800 for code analysis and architectural planning and $190,000 to Generations for rent and utilities.

It's undetermined who'll pay for this. The flood was caused when Meeker's fire service water line broke. But a City of Greeley water main also broke the day Meeker flooded. The district and its insurance company, Travelers, contend the city's water main breaking caused the bursting of Meeker's fire service line and therefore, the flood. The city says the two are unrelated. A third-party investigator, Cannon Cochran Management Services, Inc., has been brought in to determine liability. Its investigation is ongoing and Greeley Safety and Risk Coordinator Doug Clark said there's no timetable for when it will be done.

The district is paying for the reconstruction out of its reserves until the insurance situation is resolved, Myers said, knowing that either its insurance company or the city's will reimburse a large portion of the costs. What's most important to the district, though, is getting the school back.

"Just being able to focus on the day-to-day education that needs to happen in their school has been a challenge," Myers said. "Right now the priority has to be getting them back into their building and into a stable learning environment."

-- Tommy Wood covers education and Evans city government for The Tribune. You can reach him at (970) 392-4470, [email protected] or on Twitter @woodstein72.

___

(c)2018 the Greeley Tribune (Greeley, Colo.)

Visit the Greeley Tribune (Greeley, Colo.) at www.greeleytribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.