The junior/senior high school at Pioneer is currently out of commission but the school will still host athletic events this fall.
The volleyball team will play at the elementary school gym until the high school is all clear for use, Athletic Director John Bingaman said. He added the Pit is fine to use for football.
“We’re gonna be able to play football games, but we can’t get into the junior/senior high school yet,” Bingaman said. “So our plan is to play all volleyball in the main gym at the Pioneer Elementary main gym. So Tuesday at home against Argos and Thursday at home at Caston, our plan is to play JV/varsity volleyball at Pioneer Elementary School, the main gym. So we are gonna play home events, which is nice. We were really lucky because we had no home events last week, so it worked out pretty well for us.
“We have JV football at home Monday against Cass. We’ll be able to play that outside. We had to bring in some restroom facilities, some porta-potties for that.”
Flooding damaged the junior/high school. Students were let out early Wednesday, Aug. 12 and haven’t returned since, as they’ve been doing eLearning.
As of last week, the school’s tunnel system was still full of water and was causing extreme humidity in the building. The water must be removed from the tunnels and humidity removed from the building. The school is working with an outside restoration company to address the water and humidity problem and a separate outside air quality testing company to monitor the quality and safety of the air.
The hope is the junior/senior high school will be ready for use soon.
“It’s hard to tell. You just don’t know,” Bingaman said. “We are at the will of the company that’s cleaning it up, so whenever they give us a thumbs up, that’s the plan. Ideally or realistically, if we could be back there by next Monday, that would be promising, I think.”
Bingaman added it’s been difficult for many of the students to go to extended eLearning and that they’ll get the school opened as soon as possible. Grades K-6 have had in-person school at the elementary building.
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