The eight am bell rings to signify the beginning of the school day. Mrs. Loechske’s class is preparing to start their day, but the students are very distracted. There is a burnt tar smell hanging in the air, and a constant sound of banging and hammering on the roof. They’ve been dealing with this all week. Mrs. Loechske decided to move her students outside for the benefit of her students’ learning, and to hopefully escape the sounds and smells.
Construction of the roof of the Cannon Falls Middle School/High School has been ongoing for the past two weeks. On the east side of the building, they are ripping up and redoing the roof. Principal Tim Hodges said this needed to be fixed because “There were some design issues when some of the HVAC systems were replaced about 10 years ago.” Normally, in a situation like this, they would look at just patching up the roof, but due to the design issues, unfortunately, the problem was bigger than patching up this piece of the roof.
Doing the construction on the roof not only affects the people who do it, but also the teachers. This has definitely affected teachers throughout the building, but especially in classrooms on the east side. Mrs. Otto is a middle school language arts teacher who is one of many teachers with their classes placed under the construction site. She said the construction has been a huge inconvenience to her teaching, “I have had to change my plans so that we were doing activities where students wouldn’t be affected by the loud banging and constant noise.” Mrs. Loeschke is a high school teacher who teaches World History, AP US Government, and AP US History. She is placed near the construction and stated, “We have had to move class outside due to the smell and noise.” It has been a frustrating and challenging experience for most teachers throughout the building. Mrs. Otto’s least favorite part of the construction is, “The noise and the smell. It has been extremely distracting to students and staff.”
Students have had to move from class to class with the smell being strong in the classrooms and fairly stronger in the hallways. It has created inconveniences for most students as the noise and the smell have become a distraction. Ninth grader Marissa Mandelkow said, “It has affected my learning because the smell has given me headaches.” She finds the construction to be a bit of an inconvenience due to the constant noise and foul smell. On a different note, Eighth grader Kayla Kiffmeyer stated, “The construction has not affected my learning,” but her least favorite part would have to be the smell.
Could this have been done at a more convenient time? Coming from a student, Marissa said, “Yes and no. It would’ve been more convenient if they started in the summer, but if they absolutely couldn’t right now, it wouldn’t be a bad time to start because of MEA.” Coming from a staff member’s perspective, Mrs. Otto said, “ The roof definitely needed to be fixed, but in my opinion, it should have been done at a different time.” Otto wants to know if it could have been done on a longer break, the weekend, or even just after school. According to Mr. Hodges, this was planned to be at a more convenient time. It was scheduled to start the week before MEA, and they would’ve finished the following week. Due to rain the week before MEA, the project was pushed back into school hours. With smell polluting the classrooms, Thursday, October 30th, and Friday, October 31st, were switched to bold days instead of in-person sessions.
As far as future projects go, Mr. Hodges stated, “There are more sections of roofing that need to be replaced.” Currently, there are no plans to do so in the near future, unless there is an emergency repair that needs to be done. So for now, Mrs. Otto doesn’t have to worry about “Strategically placing garbage cans around the classroom,” in hopes of catching the water.
