For hours, board members, staff, teachers and parents talked about the future of Fernway Elementary School after a fire damaged the majority of the school last week.
"Our overwhelming urgency right now is to find a place for Fernway students to go to school when school opens August 22nd," said Scott Stephens, the director of communications for the Shaker City School District.
The board presented three options:
- Rent a temporary space like an office building, school or church
- Build modular classrooms which could take up to 90 days
- Find classrooms to put the students in throughout the district, but this choice would be their last resort.
"Our overwhelming commitment is to make sure that the Fernway students are together and they are together with their own teachers and principal," said Stephens.
The fire that tore through Fernway Elementary school a week ago caused the roof to collapse on the 100-year-old building. Investigators are still looking into a cause.
"We have a crew that we’ve contracted to basically secure and clean up the building this is happening at the same time that the fire department and insurance investigators and such are making their investigations, doing their do diligence to find out exactly what happened," he said.
The board wants to have a concrete plan for the 300 students by August 1.
They’ll have a community meeting with more updates about Fernway Elementary on Thursday at 6 p.m. at Lomond Elementary School.
