First-year students at Lockport Township High School will likely shift to learning at the former Lincoln-Way North High School in Frankfurt, as officials inspect a central campus building where a ceiling collapsed in a classroom last week.
The ceiling of a third-floor classroom collapsed overnight Nov. 1, the school district said. No one was present when the collapse occurred, and no one was injured.
Supt. Robert McBride said at an emergency board of education meeting Tuesday that repairs of the central campus building are “going to take longer than we thought.” The freshmen building serves about 1,000 students.
Central campus students have been attending classes online since the collapse.
The board of education approved a resolution Tuesday that would allow Lockport Township High School to use the former Lincoln-Way North High School, which closed in 2016, as a temporary alternative site. The schools are nearly 20 miles apart.
“The obvious benefit is that it has every amenity — it’s built for high schoolers,” McBride said. “It does need some work to kind of get it ramped back up, but it would allow us to operate … except where we would have a greater distance of 25 to 30 minutes away, depending on how I-80 is behaving.”
The plan awaits approval from Lincoln-Way Community High School District 210, which scheduled an emergency meeting for Thursday to vote on the proposal.
McBride said the school district aims to have students moved to Lincoln-Way North “maybe as early as Monday, hopefully by Wednesday.”
McBride also told the board Tuesday that it should consider repairing multiple ceilings throughout the central campus building, which he estimated could take two or three months.
An architectural analysis of the central campus building found other areas in the 114-year-old building that are considered a medium-to-high risk of failure.
The central campus was constructed in 1909 and had major additions, including the area where the ceiling collapsed, in 1930. Another addition was made in 1953.
McBride said that last week’s collapse was likely caused by deterioration over time.
“We know that (above the ceiling) was plaster placed on a metal mesh,” McBride said. “That plaster and metal mesh were affixed to wood furring strips and wood framing by nails. (Architects) believe that those nails — under stress, time, duration, weight — slipped out, and enough started slipping and they all came down.”
The collapse spurred further examination of the building, McBride said. Officials have since been cutting holes into the ceilings of almost every classroom in the building for inspection.
“We have a deep concern that this could still happen in any part of the building that is constructed in that way,” said Eric Sickbert, the chief architect with DLA Architects, a firm working with the high school on renovation plans for the central campus.
Days before the collapse, the Lockport Township High School District board discussed a referendum allowing the district to spend up to $85 million on improvements to the central campus building.
Less than a day after the collapse, the school board agreed to schedule a vote at its Nov. 20 meeting to place the referendum on the March 2024 ballot.
Voters in the past have rejected six plans to construct a new high school building to replace the central campus between 2006 and 2011.
