When the water receded, the campus was covered with mud 18 inches deep. On New Year’s Eve, a creek that runs behind the school overflowed.įloodwaters knocked three aging portable classrooms - which housed art and daycare programs - off their foundations and wrecked the playground. “It’s been exhausting,” said Molleen Barnes, the superintendent-principal at the Sunol Glen School in a rural swath of Alameda County. And when youngsters returned to newly built classrooms last month, the town counted it as a win.īut even as they celebrated, they wondered: What if - when the state’s massive snowpack melts this summer - the school floods again? Space was cramped.įamilies craved normalcy in the impoverished Merced County farm town of 4,000, which was inundated after Miles Creek burst its bank and busted through levees.Ĭonstruction crews worked at Planada Elementary seven days a week, sunup to sundown, said Supt. Hundreds of elementary school students and staff - many displaced after losing their homes in the deluge - crammed onto the middle school campus across town.Ĭlassrooms were shared. It had been three months since the early January flood that sent putrid brown water - filled with floating rodents and sewage - crashing into Planada Elementary School, destroying 27 classrooms, ruining thousands of books, and causing more than $12 million in damage. In early April, students in Planada, Calif., finally returned to their classrooms.
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