Delays in material acquisition could force Galesburg High School to start remote for a couple of weeks.
Lee Marbach with Russell Construction gave school board members the worst-case scenario at their meeting last night. Delays with the shipping of materials from overseas have forced delays with the high school’s lockers and marker boards.
Marbach told the board that of the delays the most painful one is the electrical switchgear, which will require the district to shut power off too much of the high school for about two weeks in order to complete the work.
Due to an oversight with Ameren not reviewing the project’s design, the district won’t see the electrical switchgear shipping till the end of August.
“It took a lot of work with the design engineer, Ameren, our contractors to get approval, which we got last Friday. And so, it took four weeks to get approval of that switchgear, and now they got us a date today of August 30th for that electrical switchgear. That’s the ship date and we’d get it here in the first part of September.”
Marbach says that the worst-case scenario is that without power, the high school won’t be ready for students until September 13.
Superintendent Dr. John Asplund told the board that the delay would affect the first two weeks of school. School is slated to start on Wednesday, September 1, for teachers and Thursday, September 2, for students. Labor day would also fall in that two-week window.
“It’s six academic days that our students would have to be in either in makeshift classrooms somewhere — but we’d have to find 48 classrooms — or online in a remote setting, which we don’t like. So, we’re trying to do everything we can to push that date up from August 30th. If we had to do a couple of days, that’s not ideal but that’s tolerable.
Asplund said the district would have to work with the Regional Office of Education to see if starting the school year in remote because of the construction delays would even be an option.
“Right now, with everything being in flux, we asked Lee to give us the worst-case scenario. This is the worst-case scenario. As bad as it is — if it comes to pass that that’s what it is, it’s bad but it’s not October.”
He adds the district will do what it can to speed things up and will be building contingency plans to get approved by the ROE to have some options, which could include alternative sites or alternating days.
Marbach also told the board that the flooring was delayed by a labor shortage.
The flooring company was having trouble finding trade workers to complete the project and was working overtime to try and get the work done. Marbach adds that the company is working to get what they can done with just two crews now.
