School repairs to last into fall
North Mianus unlikely to open in September
GREENWICH — As school officials pointed out that “it is a big project,” they announced that the damaged parts of North Mianus School will likely not be repaired in time to reopen for the start of the next school year.
The damage occurred in February after a plaster ceiling collapsed on the second floor of the original school building, which was built in 1925. That caused pipes to burst, which led a flood in the elementary school, which is the largest in town. The damaged building was closed for several weeks in the immediate aftermath.
The more recently constructed back-half of the building has since reopened to some staff and students. But many of the approximately 500 pupils have been relocated to other buildings through the end of this
school year and, very likely, into the fall.
The district’s Director of Facilities Dan Watson provided a rough timeline of the early stages of the repair project at Thursday night’s Board of Education meeting.
Demolition on the inside of the original building — which will include disposal of the plaster ceiling, hung ceiling assembly, sprinkler systems, HVAC lines, lighting fixtures and electrical conduit — was slated to begin as early as March 26.
Meanwhile, the district is soliciting a design for the rebuild, which Watson said could be another six to eight weeks. Then the project, which according to early estimates could cost the district more than $8 million, will go out to bid and a contractor selected. The actual construction work to rebuild, Watson said, is still likely several months away.
“This is far beyond like the flood we had at Cos Cob,” Superintendent of Schools Toni Jones said referring to the damage at another elementary school in fall 2018. “This actually involves construction because of the plaster ceiling issue . ... We do not anticipate that we will be ready for September. We won’t have the official timeline until we actually get the design work done. But it is a big project.”
Although many North Mianus students have been relocated to other schools, Jones said those arrangements were made at great inconvenience to staff. At Cos Cob, Old Greenwich and Parkway — where displaced North Mianus students were relocated — the district was forced to implement art-on-a-cart and music on stage, she said.
Reading interventionists were moved into small spaces, principals gave up offices and teachers lost access to work rooms to accommodate the 15 classrooms of displaced North Mianus students.
“I think one of the misunderstandings that the has community has is they think we have a lot of empty rooms because we made it work,” Jones said. “I have about two-and-a-half pages of all the displaced teachers that we have in order to make space. Their colleagues around the district really bent over backward to make space in their buildings . ... It’s been a huge upheaval.”
The early estimate for the project is $8.1 million, with a 20 percent contingency, though the district’s Chief of Operations Sean O’Keefe stressed that, because the district still has no designs for the work, that dollar amount is preliminary. The district is anticipating $1,176,134 of that figure could be covered by insurance.
“I would portray it as a conservative number,” O’Keefe said, of the $8.1 million estimate.