Going mobile

Students and teachers displaced by the September tornado will have a new — temporary — home.

Jay County Junior-Senior High School will begin utilizing mobile classrooms Monday when they return from the Thanksgiving break.

Students and staff moved furniture and equipment into the mobile classrooms, which are located on the northeast side of the school adjacent to the main gym. The junior-senior high school was on a remote learning day Tuesday in order to allow the final work that needed to be completed in order to accommodate teachers and students next week.

The last step in the process was a fire inspection scheduled for Wednesday.

The junior-senior high was closed for a week after the tornado hit the junior high and IMC (library) wing of the building on the evening of Sunday, Sept. 22. When the building re-opened, students and teachers who were displaced were shifted to underutilized spaces including the choir room, shop room, TV studio, breezeway and classrooms in which teachers have prep periods.

Those students and teachers will be back to a more typical learning environment Monday. The mobile unit has a different look on the outside, but on the interior is just like a typical school building. There is a long hallway running from end-to-end (southeast to northwest) with five classrooms on each side. Restrooms are near the northwest end of the structure.

Teachers who were preparing their classrooms Tuesday afternoon expressed excitement about their new homes. First-year  math teacher Sophia Fugiett, in particular, said she was thrilled to have natural light after spending the last couple of months teaching out of the windowless TV studio.

“Much better learning environment for them,” said Jay Schools superintendent Jeremy Gulley. “Four hundred fifty kids were displaced because of the tornado. So they had to go somewhere. We have two classrooms sharing a space in the choir room or the shop room. 

“Now we’ve freed up space in the building. It’s better for all concerned.”

The cost to mobilize the units (and to eventually remove them) came in around $500,000, he added. Rent is $16,000 monthly. All of those costs are being paid for via the corporation’s insurance.

The location of the mobile classrooms was chosen because of the need for access to utilities. The utility extensions that were put in to get to the mobile classrooms will be kept in place, even after the units are removed, Gulley said. Leaving that access will allow the school corporation to be prepared for another such incident in the future or a large-scale construction project that could require additional classroom space. (Mobile units were used during a major construction project at what was then East Jay Middle School  about 20 years ago.)

Getting the mobile classrooms up and running checks one of the three key goals Gulley set shortly after the tornado struck. The others were to get students back in the junior-senior high within a week and to contract with architecture firm Barton Coe Vilamaa on the reconstruction of the damaged area.

Gulley reported at the last Jay School Board meeting that a scope of damage has been determined and insurance firm The Chubb Corporation is working on a cost estimate for repairing the damage. In conjunction, a mechanical, electrical and plumbing survey is being completed.

Once all of that information is in, it will go to Barton Coe Vilamaa to develop the scope of the reconstruction project.

“My hope is to see bid packets out there in January,” Gulley said. “August is my goal to have kids back in the school. … I’d like to start school in August normal.”

However, he added, if the building is not ready for students by the Aug. 7 first day of school, the mobile units will remain on site as long as they are needed.