Cusick School District to resume classes Monday after flood

Jan. 26—Students in Cusick, Washington, will return to school Monday after a week off caused by a broken pipe.

The pipe burst in a middle school classroom sometime last Saturday night and was discovered Sunday by the maintenance and facilities director during a routine winter check, Cusick School District Superintendent Don Hawpe said.

Both the elementary and the combined junior-senior high school closed because the flood affected their shared cafeteria in the high school.

Staff and a crew from ServPro, a water damage restoration company, worked to extract the water, and moved materials and furniture to get the building usable again.

Students missed school from Monday to Thursday. Since the district has a four-day school week, the lost days will be made up on some Fridays instead of extending the school year into the summer, Hawpe said.

All K-12 students will be back on-site beginning Monday, but some rooms will not be accessible. About three classrooms and the library still need more work.

"I project we will have those spaces back in order in the next couple of weeks," Hawpe said. "In the meantime, we have made creative use of the space we still have available to house our students during this time."

The district is working with its insurance company to determine the extent of the damage to the building and its contents.

James Hanlon's reporting for The Spokesman-Review is funded in part by Report for America and by members of the Spokane community. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.