Both the old and new gym floors at Butler High School probably will be replaced after the damage from a July 31 flood, but officials stressed Wednesday that the work shouldn't affect this year's basketball season.
Benton Starks, Richmond County schools' facilities director, said officials met last week with their insurance provider and concluded that both floors probably must be redone.
"We're well into a quarter-million dollars now (in cost)," Starks said, but the school system's cost will be a $100,000 deductible.
Starks said Butler basketball games, which start in a couple months, likely would be played on the old gym floor first while the new gym floor is replaced. Then, when the new gym floor is completed, home games would switch to it while the school's old gym is worked on.
"That scenario will probably work best," he said, adding that the work could take at least a few months.
The floors and some other parts of the school, including a music room, were damaged during a downpour. The same storm also brought lightning that damaged electric panels at several schools. Starks said a complete damage estimate won't be determined until next week. He said it's still unclear why the downpour caused such flooding at Butler, although a clogged drain is suspected. The new gym had just been completed, and school board members toured it a week before the damage.
There hasn't been any more flooding at Butler despite subsequent storms, but another one Tuesday night did cause lightning-related problems at three other Richmond County schools.
Starks said workers were busy Wednesday at Sego Middle and Goshen Elementary and Tobacco Road Elementary schools, where lightning strikes caused intercoms, burglar alarms and fire alarms to malfunction.
Couldn't have been a clogged drain because I am sure they have a routine inspection system of drains for maintenance. Or is it we have given out sooo much to non-profits that we just can't afford to maintain city services?
BTW isn't Tobacco a new school? I wonder what the soecs for the building electrical called for? We did have specs, didn't we? I know we have a high priced advisory company we use for ensuring totally compliant construction. So what happened? Maybe the AC could unseat some of the reporters and do a little investigating. But, I guess that won't happen either.
cant have the b-ball season interrupted now can we.....not much else in terms of academics is going, low test scores, graduation rates, failure to meet ayp but at least there will be basketball
In my previous profession we would do a "root cause" analysis when damage was done. The idea is to thoroughly understand the true cause of the damage before jumping in there and fixing things. In this case, Preston Sparks tells us that, “. . . it's still unclear why the downpour caused such flooding at Butler, although a clogged drain is suspected.”
It is irresponsible to spend this kind of money fixing the Butler gym floors when the root cause has not been established. They will be fixing it again in a year or two if they don't know the cause.
Exactly lifelong, sure happy that basketball season won't be disrupted, we know how much that leads to improved academics. Priorities=misplaced, how about a new math and science wing instead?
LL said, "In my previous profession we would do a "root cause" analysis when damage was done. The idea is to thoroughly understand the true cause of the damage before jumping in there and fixing things."
Exactly! The Utilities Dept. should analyze the situation with the drain and assure us it won't happen again. Build another back-up drain if necessary. If they don't fix that problem, we will be putting another floor down in a few years. The rain that caused the damage wasn't that much.
BASKETBALL!!!! Are you serious, there's a winless football season just ahead to look forward to, how could we forget that. We are working on 50 losses in a row. Maybe one day they will try to clean up the best built stadium in the state that has gone 40 years untouched and unattended. They are refurbishing stadiums all over the state and now I hear they are thinking about tearing it down and building a new smaller cheapy aluminum one. OMG, all it would take is a decent sandblasting and a little upgrading, but we know that's not going to happen because the faculty and students at Butler don't give a crap about the school or the football team. The faculty needs to take a trip to other parts of the state to see how a football program is run, somewhere like LaGrange High School (www.lagrangefootball.com). All you have to do is look at their football website and you can see why they have a successfull program year in and year out. I am a Butler graduate and am so embarrassed by the schools pitiful website with no football schedule posted. It looks like a 5th grader created and keeps up the site. Does anyone in the Butler faculty actually have a college degree that is valid?
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