NEW MILFORD — Kaitlyn Pierce, who will be starting her second year teaching math at New Milford High School, said a lot has changed at the school since she left at the start of summer vacation.
While she’s in the same classroom as she was last year, the entire school has been through a several weeks long ordeal, after a July 5 roof fire that caused extensive damage. The fire resulted in a delay to the start of school from Aug. 25 to Sept. 6.
As a result of the fire, on Wednesday, there was no Smartboard or lower cabinets in Pierce’s classroom. Instead, she had a chalkboard on her wall and was using cardboard boxes for storage.
“It’s a little overwhelming to come in to so much stuff. I was telling my department head I hadn’t even really unpacked the old teacher’s things from last year. So I had to come in and unpack all that today because it was just in boxes,” said Pierce Wednesday morning, while inside her classroom.
For the first time since the fire, CT Insider walked through all three floors of the high school. Aside from boxes stacked against some walls in hallways and classrooms, and a small section of science labs on the third floor that was closed off, it was difficult to tell there had been such damage to the school several weeks earlier.
“I used to have cabinets all along this wall, that are not here at the moment, which is why there’s cardboard boxes,” Pierce said.
All her files that were in the cabinets were packed into boxes.
She added, however, she’s “pleasantly surprised” she was able to locate everything, including personal letters from former students.
“I came in and it was all right here,” Pierce said.
She added the school is working on getting rolling carts with Smartboards on them — the technology for which she’s familiar.
“My files with my curriculum that I teach would be on the Smartboard and I pull those up to teach my lessons on, so I literally would only think of it as almost a whiteboard. I would do all the math problems on the Smartboard,” she said. “I have pre-written things on the Smartboard that I’d show for notes. So, those things are gonna have to get written out by hand. That’s showing my young age because I’ve never had to really do that. But that’s how I was taught in high school. So I’m just gonna have to write everything,which will take extra time.”
For storage, she plans to put as many items as she can on top of the cardboard boxes.
“I do have my overhead cabinets still, which is nice,” she said. “And I’ve got file cabinets and some bookshelves.”
She added once she passes out textbooks to her students, she’ll have more room to store other items.
“I’m just gonna have to be creative and figure out what I will do for now,” Pierce said.
Rebuild
New Milford Mayor Pete Bass, who was also at New Milford High School Wednesday along with the town’s Public Works Director Jack Healy, reflected on the fire — and the rebuilding process.
He said on the evening of the fire, he saw a site most would never see inside a school building — a waterfall.
“The water … kept pouring down the vestibule,” Bass said.
There was water on all three floors of the building — and heavy flooding many areas.
“Obviously, the third floor had the most damage — water, smoke and everything else,” Bass said.
Workers have been at the school seven days a week — working very long hours.
Every ceiling tile — about 300,000 — inside the school is brand new.
Every electrical circuit has been inspected. Every fire detector has been checked. Every Ethernet cable has been repaired and replaced.
“They’re putting in all of the IT information,” Healy said.
To date, all the fire circuitry has been inspected.
“We’re doing sprinkler checks and we’re doing also a complete evaluation of the water loops and fire suppression loops throughout the entire building,” Healy said.
Deep cleaning was done behind the walls. All furniture has also been cleaned.
A new air filtering system was installed.
“It’s actually a higher grade that was here prior,” Bass said. “So actually you have cleaner air today than you had before the fire.”
Healy said the biggest challenge has been to meet the commitment by the town, Board of Education and community to have the building ready for the first day of school.
At one point, the board was looking at outdoor pods for the students that could be set up outside the school, on a temporary basis. However, that concept was not needed, since the school met its goal of opening for students Sept. 6.
As New Milford High School Principal Raymond Manka walked through the hallways Wednesday morning, visiting with staff members, he said he felt very grateful with how the school looks.
“First and foremost, I’m just super thrilled to be able to be where we are. It was a lot of hard work from so many in regards to our contractors, our facilities, our IT. From where we were from July 5 to today is outstanding,” Manka said. “We’re working with our district folks to come up with our internet, our connectivity… and our technology is being assembled and we’re looking forward to having it in the classrooms for our kids.”
What’s next?
Once Belfor — a recovery and restoration contractor — completes the roof repair, the school will then resume working on its original roof project, which is 60 percent completed.
Greenwood Builders, based in Massachusetts, is the new contractor that will work with the town and municipal building committee on the project.
The former contractor for the project, United Roofing & Sheet Metal, Inc., in Brookfield, was fired by the mayor in July following the blaze — the second roof fire at the school in less than a year. It was determined the contractor caused the first fire, in December. The cause for the July fire is still under investigation.
Bass said there are three projects that fall under the actual roof work.
“You have this inside work, which is the restoration and the reconstruction and the mitigation,” he said. “Then, you have the repair of the roof, which is project two, and then project three is the completion of the standing seam roof.”
In the interim, work that will continue at the high school includes continued detailed cleaning in the third floor center hallway, in several classrooms and center hallway rooms, and continued roof removal and replacement in the area where the fire began.
“This is a collaborative effort. Everybody rode in the same way,” Bass said. “The mission statement was getting kids into school.”
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