PLAMONDON - On Tuesday morning, as students across the Lakeland region were returning to school for the 2024-2025 year, students from École Plamondon School were also coming back to class – after an extended absence from the building following a massive flood in April.
On the afternoon of April 18, two months before the end of the 2023-2024 school year, a burst water pipe under Ecole Plamondon School caused extensive flooding, sending waves of water through the K-12 building, which is also home to the local community library.
For the remainder of the school year, students and staff held classes at temporary locations in the area, including the Plamondon Festival Centre, Plamondon curling club, neighbouring École Beausejour, as well as the Portage College Lac La Biche campus.
Over the spring and summer months, construction crews were busy repairing the damage caused by the flooding, which was initially estimated by officials with the Northern Lights Public Schools (NLPS) division to cost $2.5 million. This work included replacing floors and walls, as well as the general cleanup of debris caused by the 250,000 litres of water that gushed through the building. Although classes are back in session at École Plamondon, there is still work to be done, including the building and installation of new cabinetry in the building.
École Plamondon Principal Karen Grygus greeted students on Tuesday morning as they arrived on school buses and walked to the front doors for the first time since April.
For Grygus, it feels great to see students and staff back working and learning in the school. She added that recently, representatives of the school’s sports teams-the École Plamondon Hawks-were at the school in anticipation of its reopening. The school principal said the renovations and repairs have been extensive, and she’s happy with the progress that allowed the school to re-open for the first day of class.
“I didn’t think this would happen when it first started, but we’re here and we’re excited, and even the Hawks came on Friday to welcome us back, so it was a pretty cool experience,” she told Lakeland This Week.
Having students learning at various locations in Plamondon and Lac La Biche for the remainder of the last school year, Grygus said, was difficult. She continued by saying that the school is a family unit and therefore, being apart instead of together was definitely challenging.
However, there were upsides to attending school in these temporary venues. From April-June, students in grades 4-12 did their classes at Portage College in Lac La Biche. As Grygus explains, through this experience, students in the older grades realized that post-secondary education is maybe a possibility for them to pursue after high school. Other students finished their school year in classrooms inside the neighbouring École Beausejour and inside Plamondon’s Festival Place and the community’s curling rink.
Grygus is greatly appreciative of the organizations in the community who stepped forward after École Plamondon School closed and kindly offered students places where they could finish out their studies before summer.
“It was really a group effort that made it a possibility,” she said.
One of those students who had been displaced by the flooding and who finished the school year at the Plamondon Curling Club was Ava Holloway. She came back to school on Tuesday morning with her grandmother, Nikki Currie, both smiling and eager to get back to the school routine.
The Grade 4 student not only adjusted well to her temporary school location last spring, but truly enjoyed the experience. There is a park across the street from the curling rink where she and her classmates could play between lessons.
“It was way more fun,” Ava said with a smile.
Currie said overall, the move to temporary classrooms following the flooding went very well for her granddaughter and other students.
“It was well organized…the teachers did a great job moving everything over so yeah, it was perfect,” she said.
Schools in various school divisions across the Lakeland welcomed back more than 9,000 students to classes on Tuesday morning.
