MCDONALD SCHOOLS Officials to ask FEMA for aid with repairs

If FEMA can help, the project will be bid out soon, the schools chief said.
McDONALD -- School district officials will meet with representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Thursday and ask for financial help to repair the water-damaged gym floor in the new Roosevelt Elementary School.
The floor was covered with 8 inches of water during a storm two weeks ago, Superintendent Michael Wasser said at Tuesday's school board meeting.
Although residents came in to help push water off the floor for three hours, the new wood floor buckled down the middle into a peak the following day.
Roosevelt Elementary on Seventh Street is to open to pupils this month.
Looking ahead
District officials will meet with FEMA on Thursday at the Kent State University Trumbull branch in Champion. Wasser said once the district knows if FEMA can help cover the cost of replacing the floor, the district will put the project out to bid in the next two to three weeks.
He anticipates the floor should be replaced by mid-November.
The storm water also flooded a mechanical room next to the gym, but damage to that room was relatively minor, treasurer Thomas Radabaugh said.
The board, meanwhile, approved payment of $36,724 for D.A. Terreri & amp; Sons for asbestos removal, which was completed almost a year ago at the high school.
It also approved the cost of school lunches to be the same as last year and hired Patrice Simmons at $17 an hour, retroactive to July 28, as a summer intervention teacher for Roosevelt Elementary.