FORT SMITH — All district buildings should be ready in time for the 2023-2024 school year despite the flooding issues at Peak Innovation Center and the fire at Ramsey Middle School over the summer.
Joseph Velasquez, the district’s construction project manager, had several construction managers, consultants and design firms to attend the School Board on Monday to give an update building projects.
Scott Tucker, a ServPro production manager, said his crew is about 65% through cleaning and assessing the damage at Ramsey after a small fire occurred in the orchestra room in June. He said they should be done with the rest of the school by Aug. 1, but the timeline to restore the fine arts wing is still being determined.
Marty Mahan, the district’s deputy superintendent, said the district is still assessing the feasibility of using Fairview Elementary, a nearby church and Ramsey’s cafeteria and media center to teach fine arts classes.
“We had at least 34 students take home their orchestra instruments, so those are safe,” Mahan said. “We have, working through the inventory, the go ahead and ordered replacements for all those that were in the orchestra room, because they were a total loss. Also affected were the band instruments, which were close by in a different room, so ServPro is working through the cleaning of that, and if there’s any need for replacement of cases or something, we’ll look at that when we get an assessment of that.”
Velasquez said 14 district buildings had some amount of flooding due to the heavy rain July 14. This includes the Peak Innovation Center, which has flooded three times now this year, and once in June 2022.
The center opened to students in March 2022 and is a collaboration between the School District and the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, but owned by the district. It serves roughly 280 students from 22 school districts across Crawford, Franklin, Johnson, Logan, Scott and Sebastian counties through the university’s Western Arkansas Technical Center program.
The center houses courses for automation and robotics; computer integrated machining; electronics technology and industrial maintenance; emergency medical responders; medical office assistants; network engineering; and unmanned aerial systems. It’s the last of the district’s Vision 2023 plan projects to be completed, which were paid for through a 5.558-mill property tax increase voters approved in May 2018 generating roughly $121 million.
At the School Board’s meeting in June, Scott Archer, mechanical engineer and a owner of HSA Engineering, presented a drainage assessment for Peak and how it could be contributing to the flooding issues.
Archer summarized there are holes in the drainage system right next to the building, the drainage system was downsized from a 10 inch to an 8 inch pipe and other connections from other 4-inch to 12-inch pipes aren’t standard or properly sealed.
“So my recommendations are to abandon the existing below-slab drain pipe in the building. Just get rid of it, take it out of the equation. Rework the roof drain piping between the two buildings, and at that time, fix the roof drainage that are in the existing trough drain between the two buildings,” Archer said. “At the same time, we rework this roof drain piping, and we take it to the south end of the building, take it down and take it out to the ditch and make the pipe adequate.”
Archer said those fixes would cost an estimated $160,000.
Velasquez said the estimate could cost between $160,000 and $250,000. He asked the board on Monday to move forward with HSA’s solution, and if the project costs more than $250,000 they will return to the board to get approval
The board unanimously agreed to Velasquez’s request.
Other summer construction projects in the district include Clark Contractors doing air quality improvement work at Chaffin and Ramsey middle schools and Euper Lane and Sutton elementary schools; Beshears Construction adding 10 classrooms to Morrison Elementary, doing duct work for 12 classrooms at Southside High School and making indoor air quality improvements to Park Elementary and Darby Middle School; Nabholz Construction doing air quality improvements at Fairview Elementary and Northside High School; C.R. Crawford Construction doing the Kimmons Middle School cafeteria addition, secure vestibules entrance and air quality at Kimmons and Ballman Elementary.
All the businesses said projects should be done before school starts with the exception of Darby and Northside’s air quality projects, which were delayed to fall because they are waiting on units to arrive, and Kimmons’ secure vestibule, which was delayed indefinitely due to supply chain issues with the glass shipment.
A construction site is seen, Wednesday, July 19, 2023, at Kimmons Middle School in Fort Smith. The school is one of several in the Fort Smith School District, including Ramsey Middle School, Fort Smith Northside High School, Fort Smith Southside High School and the Peak Innovation Center, undergoing construction projects this summer leading up to the start of the new academic year. Visit nwaonline.com/photo for today’s photo gallery. (River Valley Democrat-Gazette/Hank Layton)