Construction work underway: fixing structural issues at 3 Wake County elementary schools

Three Wake County schools with recently discovered structural problems will undergo repairs starting this weekend, following the school system's signing of three contract with three companies to fix them Friday.

The schools are all expected to start on time for this upcoming school year, with one of them starting at first in another school building.

Durant Road Elementary School teachers will report this week to Abbotts Creek Elementary down the street in Raleigh.

Durant Road Elementary is a year-round school set to start July 30, while Abbotts Creek Elementary is on a traditional calendar and set to start Aug. 24. Aug. 24 is the same day the other two affected schools --- Creech Road Elementary in Garner and Davis Drive Elementary in Cary --- are scheduled to go back to school.

Durant Road Elementary teachers will report to Abbotts Creek on Monday. Work at Durant Road Elementary is expected to be done by Aug. 17, at which point Abbotts Creek staff will move back in and prepare for the school year, which is expected to start on time.Work is expected to be done at Creech Road and Davis Drive elementaries by Aug. 21.

If teachers can't get into the school before then, the school board may need to reschedule their planned teacher workdays for another time during the school year. The board will hear about that at its Tuesday meeting.

The Wake County Board of Education approved 9-0 Monday emergency construction contracts at the three schools with significant structural concerns.

The cost of the project wasn't known at the time but couldn't exceed the budget item it fell under and is expected to be well under $10 million. Information on the cost of the contracts and who the contractors are was not available Friday evening.

The structural problems are a new headache in the district, which has been fighting infrastructure challenges for years and hearing a bevy of concerns about them from staff, students and families.

Namely, they're dealing with poorly functioning heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems that have caused early dismissals at dozens of schools on extreme temperature days. School board members have acknowledged the problems and set aside more funding for facilities but still have about $800 million remaining in deferred maintenance.

Engineers this summer found problems with the connections between walls and other parts of the building at Creech Road Elementary School in Garner.

On Monday, district leaders told the school board that Creech Road Elementary first had a visible crack in a school wall in the spring of 2024. When district inspectors returned this spring, they found the crack has grown by an inch or two --- far faster than expected from a typical settling pattern, which can yield some cracks, Taylor said.

Durant Road Elementary School in Raleigh and Davis Drive Elementary School in Cary were built using the same design, prompting the district to examine those buildings as well. The found similar, but less severe, issues at those two schools. They didn't have cracks but had internal issues noted in wall X-rays. A fourth school was built using the same design but was not deemed unsafe, Taylor said.That led to an engineer telling the school system that all three schools were unsafe to occupy.

All three schools were built in the 1990s.

Messages from school principals Friday indicated the schools weren't built according to their building plans.The buildings will need new and better connections within and between walls.