‘Infiltration’ issue: School 7 needs emergency repairs
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The winter was unkind to Dunkirk's School 7, and now it needs emergency repairs.
The city school district's Board of Education authorized declaration of an emergency at the building Tuesday. Water got into the bricks of the Lake Shore Drive East school and has caused serious damage, according to Tim Abbey, district buildings and grounds coordinator.
The emergency declaration allows the district to award a contract without competitive bidding. Abbey said it will also speed up the permitting process -- that should take "a matter of days" rather than the 16 to 18 weeks a similar project would normally take.
The cost will be about $250,000 and the money will come from the fund for the district's current capital project.
Abbey offered a presentation to the board that graphically demonstrated the problem. He brought an original brick from the building, built in 1920, and a replacement brick put in during renovations in the 1990s. The old brick was extremely porous -- Abbey likened it to a sponge, noting that in an old test, another brick from 1920 drew in water much like a sponge.
"School 7 has been a masonry issue since it was built, and it's still a masonry issue," he said.
He called the old bricks "very prone to infiltration" and said "it's on the whole school."
Abbey showed slides of severe damage to bricks and mortar joints on the exterior of the school.
He said repair workers "will work around the school schedule as much as we can."
School 7's brick work has "been a nightmare since we started," said board President Kenneth Kozlowski.
Abbey said he's worked for the school districts 16 years and been involved with six masonry projects at School 7. Just one masonry project was necessary on the rest of the district's schools in that time, he added.