Voices concerns for classmates before BOE at Monday meeting
KINGWOOD — Preston High student government sent an envoy with a message to the Preston County Board of Education Monday: Fix the leaks, please.
Senior Megan Noss said the school has “significant” leaks. Noss said there are leaks in the history hallway stairwell, an office, a classroom and the former Energy Express office.
She repeated comments from students, including, “I feel my learning is being disrupted,” “I just want the school to be better,” and a student said that she had assumed the leaks would be repaired after the maintenance levy passed.
Another student said she had fallen “countless times” on the stairwell.
Closing the stairwell is not a viable option, Noss said, because students would likely step over the caution tape, and it would add to congestion in the hallways, if it were closed.
Preston School Superintendent Steve Wotring said part of the problems will be addressed in the concourse roof project. Preston sought a State School Building Authority grant to do those repairs, but it was not funded.
Levy dollars will be used for the work instead, he said, and last Thursday the engineer did a walk-through of the building in preparation for letting a request for proposals soon.
Hopefully the work will be completed this summer, Wotring said.
While the concourse project will address the stairwell problems, the leaks in what’s known as the ninth grade addition will be a separate project. No timeline was laid out for that work.
“Ninth grade wing, that’s a whole different piece of the puzzle,” Wotring said.
The superintendent offered to meet with student government and talk on any issue.
In other PHS news, Assistant Superintendent Brad Martin said a request for proposals to put 106 new security cameras in the school, including athletic complexes, will go out this week.
Preston County Schools received a $110,000 Homeland Security grant to do the project. Martin said the original estimate to complete the work was $160,000, but school maintenance staff and CTE students pulled some of the cable, lowering costs.
If more funds are needed, they will be taken from the maintenance levy, which named school security as one of the uses for the money, Martin said.
