Monday, students at Grace E. Hardeman Elementary School will return to their campus for classes for the first time since a storm ripped off part of the roof on March 21.
“We’ve had an ‘army’ on sight [working],” said Birdville ISD spokesman Mark Thomas. “When you lose part of a roof and it penetrates into the building, you’ve got a lot of things to check.”
Most of the students were relocated to a temporary campus at the old Richland Elementary School in Richland Hills, about five miles away from Watauga. Four special education classes were held at another nearby campus.
“Our community and our staff have been amazing through this process,” Thomas said. “We talk about the BISD family and we’ve really seen that from PTA to staff, to other campuses in the district stepping up to support this campus that was impacted in the way it was.”
While students have returned to the Hardeman campus, the repair work will continue.
“It is at a functional state. It’s clean, we’ve done a couple of air quality tests with independent companies to make sure that the air quality is good,” Thomas said. “There are still repairs to be made over the next couple of weeks – probably going into summer to get that roof completely repaired and things back ready for next school year.”
The district has not yet released an estimate on the cost of the damage.
