×

Officials say Harman School will be ready

HARMAN — Randolph County Schools officials say Harman School will be ready for the return of students in August.

Debbie Schmidlen, superintendent of schools for Randolph County, offered an update to members of the Randolph County Board of Education during their regular meeting Tuesday regarding progress being made at Harman School.

“As far as we’re concerned, we are ready to have school at Harman,” she said.

Schmidlen noted the school’s principal, Laura Hawkins, has had a positive attitude despite recent flooding.

“Harman did get water again in the front yard — if you saw Facebook, Mrs. Hawkins was floating around on a floatie,” she joked. “Leave it to Laura to keep a great, positive attitude regardless of the situation.”

Amanda Smith, Randolph County Board of Education president, noted sand bags were donated by Michael’s, a sub-contracted company for Dominion Energy. Officials said the sand bags helped to prevent any additional entering the school during more recent rain storms.

Concerns were raised regarding the sanitation system at the school being up to standard when students return.

Assistant Superintendent Joseph Arbogast said the system is currently down but will be running efficiently when school begins on Aug. 15, according to Harman town officials.

“I spoke to (officials) and what is going on is one of the intake tanks is down right now, but (they) said everything looks promising that they will have that fixed by the time school starts up – they will be able to process everything at that point,” he said. “Right now one part of it is down, but they believe that it’ll be up and running by then.”

It was noted that recent flooding caused minor damage in the school’s cafeteria, and AHF Products has donated materials to replace the damaged areas. The board emphasized recent flooring laid in the kitchen of the cafeteria earlier this summer was not damaged.

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *

Starting at $3.92/week.

Subscribe Today