By Stephen Smoot
“You could hear the trees crackling in Simpson Creek as the water was coming towards our school and our field,” remembered Bridgeport High School Principal Renee Matthews about this month’s recent flooding of the campus.
“It just rolled in,” she said. “By 6:10 we were under two feet of water.
Bridgeport High School is used to winning sports teams, but making a school a true winner comes from the dedication and passion of those who serve the students.
This space was set aside this month for another group of winners. It was planned to celebrate school bus drivers and the difficult job they perform every day, but something quite remarkable happened elsewhere in the Harrison County School system this month.
It was shared at the August 18 meeting of the Harrison County Board of Education.
The school welcomed faculty and staff on the planned first day, but not students. The brunt of the recent storms overwhelmed drainage systems and left Bridgeport High School inundated with water in parts of the campus.
Said Matthews, “We had multiple classrooms. We had a field. We had a field house, locker rooms, all kinds of things that are damaged, and it is taking a lot. Not just today, but last night.
While Jamie Kosik and his crews have the task of restoring buildings to service after damage, faculty and staff jumped into action to save as much as they could. At the end of the day, they saved a great deal of maintenance and repair for the hard working crews that keep the schools in top shape, safe, and clean. The parents also inquired about the removal of virtual learning options.
These questions came during public comment. Under the law, the Board of Education and Harrison County Schools officials are not permitted to respond to protect the right of the public to share.
“When that storm hit at 3 a.m., we could not get out of our building,” Matthews explained
And instead of teachers freaking out, they grabbed brooms. Every shop vac we had in the building, every rag. We were running over to the middle school to get rags and mops and anything and everything we could get into Bridgeport High School to try to block the water from coming in.”
The quick reaction and response helped to prevent even more widespread damage. “They did it. They worked their butts off,” she said.
Marsha Coakley, special education teacher at Bridgeport High School, added more to the inspiring report of the hard work needed to restore the flooded campus. “The entire front of the school, which included nine classrooms and two entryways, was underwater,” she shared.
“We got there this morning at 9 a.m., and we were armed with pressure washers, buckets, mops, bleach, rags, muck boots, gloves, and a can do attitude,” explained Coakley.
“A small group of 25 to 30 employees put in what can be described as nothing less than an incredible accomplishment, nothing short of a miracle,” she went on to explain, then added that “We removed all of the laminate flooring, approximately 6,480 square feet from nine classrooms and two entryways, removed the furniture, bleached the existing floors, which will now service the students until the replacements are done, cleaned the walls near the bottoms, wiped off the legs of every piece of furniture that touched the floor, and then returned the furniture to its rightful position,”
She asked the rhetorical question “why am I here,” when concluding, then said “because today, for six and a half hours, I witnessed the staff and faculty members at Bridgeport High School come together for the success of our students.”
“Our focus was in the halls and the rooms that we call home from August until June. When the staff returns to Bridgeport High School, we will be ready,” said Coakley. “We will be there to welcome our students and give them every ounce of what we have for their success.”
She concluded that “if it were not for the actions of a few today, I cannot imagine when the students at Bridgeport High School would be able to return to school.”
“I will go to bed tonight knowing I have done all the right things that I should be doing, and I am very thankful tonight for my colleagues, my administration, and I hope for a very good year for all of our students,” she added.
Matthews stated that Jamie Kosik brought a Harrison County Schools team in to quickly restore the school facility to student use. The work of those on the ground saved a lot of effort. As Matthews stated “he sent in the maintenance staff that did start ripping up flooring. But there was no way that those few gentlemen that were there were going to be able to rip up that flooring, sop up all the water that was underneath it, and sanitize desks and floors and walls and everything else to be ready for kids tomorrow.”
Harrison County Schools Superintendent Dora Stutler stated in the meeting that “We were getting reports from all over the county, things happening, but the bulk of it was happening right there at Bridgeport. Mr. Kosik was on the phone all evening with that waiting to see what the water was going to do.”
Kosik revealed that “When I first got there, you look at it and you think, oh, it’s no big deal. And once you start pulling the tile up, you realize how much water was underneath there, which would have been a miserable problem later with mold, mildew, and everything else.”
“So kudos to the teachers, the staff. And what you did the night before, you probably saved a lot of extra work just by making sure you were sucking up as much water as you could. [Verify quote against source; apparent doubled words: ‘that was that was a a’] to do.”
Floors had to be replaced because water had saturated them to the point of sponginess and quick work saved the onset of mold and mildew.
Matthews shared that the community, companies and individuals alike, donated dehumidifiers and cleaning supplies to boost the recovery effort.
“If it wasn’t for my teachers coming in and doing what they did, that first floor would not be ready,” said Matthews.
“And I cannot ever say enough about my staff.”
Other schools saw some high water, but much less damage. Kosik reported that drainage installed at West Milford prevented serious problems and added that he received about 70 different reports of roof leaks from the heavy rains.
