Students at Olympia High School and Middle School in western McLean County are taking classes remotely all week as crews clean up after last week's fire.
Superintendent Laura O'Donnell said it's not clear when the school will be ready for students to return. She said parents have been understanding.
“They know our priority is getting the kids back into their classrooms as quickly as possible,” O’Donnell said. “We are at the mercy of the restoration company and how fast they can work through the building.”
Classes were canceled on Friday as students were unable to get back into the building until later that day to retrieve their laptops, phones and other personal items they left behind when they evacuated during Thursday's fire.
O'Donnell said restoration crews have to do a deep cleaning, scrub the carpets, wipe down everything and get rid of the smoky smell throughout the building.
The high school gym has had several renovations in the last few years including new flooring, lighting and bleachers. Now the gym floor has water damage and will be closed until fall. O’Donnell said it remains to be seen whether the floor can be repaired.
“It was in really good shape (before the fire), this is not great but at least our classrooms aren’t impacted and hopefully that will facilitate or accelerate the process of getting us back in the building,” O’Donnell said.
The gym is directly below the solar panels that caught fire on the roof.
O'Donnell said the district will assess what kind of safety improvements it can make, but she said based on preliminary data the district has studied, solar panel fires appear to be very rare.
“We also know there is some newer technology that will be looking into that may help with some malfunctioning panels and identifying those early That’s something we are looking at,” O’Donnell said.
Olympia has mobile hot spots for families that lack reliable internet service and, as it did during the pandemic, the district has parked school buses with Wi-Fi throughout the community.
Classes have not been disrupted at Olympia's grade schools.
O'Donnell said the cost of the damage is still unknown.
