By Monique Roth
L’Observateur

RESERVE — Lake Pontchartrain Elementary School students and teachers won’t be in their new school building until August 2017, meaning their time spent learning and teaching in a temporary trailer community located behind East St. John Elementary School’s campus is far from over.

The school’s design development is set to be completed by the end of January and construction is slated to begin June 2015. The timeline allows for 20 months to construct the building, which will serve 800 pre-kindergarten through eighth grade students. The current building, which was damaged in 2012’s Hurricane Isaac, had the capacity for 1100 students.

Z. Ames Yeates and Cynthia Miller Yeates of Yeates and Yeates Architects, the designing firm for the project, told the St. John the Baptist Parish School Board they “tried to represent a realistic schedule.”

“Tell us why it would take three years,” Superintendent Kevin George said after a handful of audience and board members were visibly upset with the projection at this month’s school board meeting.

The architects explained the $28 million school would see increased construction costs by reducing the timeline. They said there were several steps not detailed in documents given to the board, including elevation work, applying for permits, inspections by state fire marshal and environmental assessments before and after demolition.

The architects also noted even if the building was completed earlier, there is no way it would be completed early enough to move in for the fall of 2016, saying at the earliest it could be ready is January 2017.

Board member Russ Wise said “the only proper time” for the students and teachers to move into the building would be at the beginning of a school year, citing end-of-the-year test scores could be affected by a move and new environment.

Cynthia Yeates tried to assure the board it was “not a luxurious schedule” for any of the contractors, and hard work would go into making sure everything was done on time and on budget.

“I’m just a little disappointed we have to wait three years,” Gerald Keller, a veteran board member, said.

Board member Keith Jones told board members they need to remember the negative impact that occurred with the rushed construction of Emily C. Watkins Elementary School.

For more than a year and a half, the district battled moisture-control issues at the school caused by problems with its HVAC unit, and temperatures were kept low to reduce the humidity inside the building. There were also mildew and mold issues.

Felix Boughton, director of finance and business for St. John schools, echoed Jones’ sentiments about ECW, saying the board needed to “step back and prevent that from happening in the future.”

Updates and timelines were also given at the meeting for the reopening of East St. John High School, the other district school damaged by Hurricane Isaac.

Project Manager Cindy Janecke of All South Consulting Engineers said East St. John High School building repair construction documents and mitigation construction documents are 95 percent complete, and advertisements for bids on both will begin next week.

Board members seemed pleased the project was on track, with the ESJHS set to reopen in August 2015. The school’s students and teachers are currently located in the old Leon Godchaux building in Reserve.

Janecke said the board and Federal Emergency Management Agency reached a fixed cost agreement on April 2, and FEMA funding of $38.6 million would be deposited into the district’s account by the start of construction.

Total funding available to rebuild both schools, including FEMA dollars and money earmarked from district taxes, is $56.6 million.