Bumps on the road back to school in Island Park

Even though students in Island Park were ready to head back to school on Sept. 7, their schools weren’t quite ready for them.

Due to flooding from Irene and earlier storms, parts of the Francis X. Hegarty Elementary School and the Lincoln Orens Middle School were damaged. And although school still started on time, repairs are being made to the Lincoln Orens gym and the Hegarty boiler room.

“As the result of some of the issues with the weather, we had a sump pump that was in the girls locker room [at Lincoln Orens] that stopped working and flooded the locker room and part of the gym,” said Island Park Superintendent Dr. Rosmarie Bovino. “[It flooded] about 800 square feet.”

The flooding is only a small part of the gym, which is 8,000 square feet. However, the wood floor in the flooded area warped and buckled, making it unsafe for children to use.

To fix the problem, the district is going to have to close off half the gym so workers can replace the floor.

“We’re very optimistic that everything will be completed by the start of the winter season,” Bovino said, adding that, for now, kids are still able to go outside for gym class, and the district is planning to capitalize on that as much as possible.

The fact that Island Park is a small school district also plays in its favor for the gym repairs. “Our classes are 90 or so kids. We don’t have classes of 300 kids,” said Bovino, adding that, because of the small class size, half a gym would be enough to accommodate classes. “It’s not a problem in terms of occupancy. We rarely have a full grade in the gymnasium at a time, it’s usually half a grade.”

Hegarty was also hit with a problem that needs to be fixed before the cold sets in.

“We had between 13 and 15 inches of water in our boiler room in Hegarty,” Bovino said. The water damaged the boiler in the school. The heavy rain also caused a few small leaks in the building’s roof, but it’s the boiler that’s Bovino’s main concern. “I’m working on making sure that we have the components coming in for the boilers this week, because we’re going to want to be getting the heat on.”

Adding to the district’s first-day problems was the fact that some freshmen going to Long Beach High School were not picked up by their bus. “Although our transportation department confirmed with [Long Beach’s] transportation department the pickup time for the kids, unfortunately it was not correct,” said Bovino. “So we sent another bus.”

Long Beach, which is responsible for bussing the children, corrected the error for the next day. But Bovino confirmed that the mistake did not originate in Island Park.

“I don’t like to point fingers. But from our end, we had everything confirmed,” she said. “We have a great relationship with both of the high schools, and they do a great job communicating with us.”