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Roof leaks and water damage from Tuesday’s torrential rainfall highlights the need for Alamance County to provide more money for school maintenance, the Alamance-Burlington School System said.
Several schools in the school district had “significant leaks and water intrusion” during the storms, the district said in a statement issued Tuesday night.
The torrential rainfall and gusty winds were part of a sprawling line of storms that hit other parts of the South with high winds that blew roofs off houses, flipped over campers and tossed about furniture on Tuesday, though the north-central part of North Carolina was spared the worst of the storms.
Graham High School has some of the worst leaks in the district, with major damage in the new welding classroom including buckled ceiling tiles, the school district said.
“Our crews have removed water-damaged sheetrock to prevent mold and to better assess the damage at Graham High. This has resulted in a large hole in the ceiling in these areas. Additionally we have bins there to collect water,” it said.
Haw River is getting a new roof in February to address leaks, Eastern Alamance High School is also dealing with leaks throughout its buildings, and there are smaller leaks at other schools, including South Mebane, B. Everett Jordan, Western Middle, and Western High, the district said.
School officials in recent months have bluntly called out members of the Alamance County Board of Commissioners for what they call long-term inadequate funding of maintenance needs in the school system, which they have called the root cause of the toxic mold discovered this past summer in many buildings throughout the district. That criticism was renewed in Tuesday night’s statement.
“Today’s storm of course has exacerbated these ongoing issues as a result of inadequate funding from our County,” it said, noting the average age of the district’s buildings is 56. “We have to keep pouring resources into them — mopping floors, replacing ceiling tiles, etc. until funding is secured from the Alamance County Commissioners to correct these issues.”
Six maintenance crews went out Wednesday morning to further check damage to school buildings.
