It’s been over a month since Latonia Elementary’s gym underwent a partial collapse.
The cause of the collapse and the exact timeline on when repairs might occur is still unknown, Advantage Structural Engineers principal engineer Casey Hitter told the Board of Education Thursday night, but the process of determining what to do next is moving into its next stages.
“We’re moving as quickly as we can on it,” Hitter said. “It’s a priority on our office.”
The building’s gym partially collapsed on Dec. 31. No one was in the building during the collapse, so nobody got hurt, but classes were moved online while engineers and structural officials engaged in a controlled demolition of the affected areas and installed stabilization measures. Members of the Covington Fire Department and Kenton County Planning and Development Services were also consulted after the collapse.
The district invited parents to an informational session shortly before reopening the building later in January, where Hitter and representatives from other firms involved in fielding the problem answered questions. At the time, Superintendent Alvin Garrison assured parents the building was safe to reenter.
Advantage has been doing bi-weekly walk-thrus of the building since the collapse, and Hitter said, “Nothing has come up with those. There’s no concern whatsoever. Everything seems to still in place and still functioning.”
The next walk-thru, he said, would take place next Friday.
Advantage and Structural Systems Repair, the two firms initially brought in to assess the damage, are focused mostly on stabilizing the building, ensuring safety mitigations and determining how to rebuild if necessary. Local architects Emboss Design, who have been involved in renovation projects in the region, including several recently at Kenton County Schools, have also been brought in to advise on the possible rebuild.
Finding out what caused the collapse is the job of a forensic engineer from EFI Global, an international investigations firm working with insurance company Sedgwick. Sedgwick will eventually provide a scope of work report in conjunction with Advantage. The engineer from EFI Global did not attend the meeting.
Once the scope of work and an estimated cost of repairs is completed, it will be presented to the board members, who will have to vote on a final decision on what to do next. Hitter said he could not reasonably provide a cost estimate at the time of the meeting on Thursday.
Given the board members would the ones making the decision on what actually to do, there was discussion among the members about how it would work into the district’s new master facilities plan, which considers how best to organize the students and buildings in the district. Hitter noted that the insurance company’s scope of work would focus on rebuilding what was already there.
Although conceivably the board could vote any way on next steps, Board Chair Tom Haggard said, “I think the rebuild of the gym won’t have a real impact on how we really move forward with the master facilities plan because it’s kind of its own thing.”
Board Member Stephen Gastright, who works as an architect and who spearheaded much of the early part of the master facilities plan discussions, said that “we can’t have a an elementary school without a gymnasium,” so the board was going to have to make some decisions about ensuring kids got their necessary physical education. That could mean temporarily moving the students to other buildings or possibly shutting down Latonia and reworking school boundaries while repairs were made.
“Time is of the essence [for] either path,” Gastright said, “either executing the insurance company’s rebuild plan that gets Latonia whole for next school year, or starting the master plan earlier than planned.”
No official action was taken at the meeting.