Reading, Writing And Roof Repair; Schools Deal With Storm Damage

EL PASO, TX- For dozens of students and teachers in the Ysleta Independent School District, the first day of school meant dealing with soggy playgrounds and some leaky roofs.

ABC-7’s Christina Boomer took a tour of Desert View Middle School and found school officials working hard to make sure the first day back was free of Storm 2006 problems.

Dozens of watermarks and remnants of a leaking roof greeted students and teachers for their first day of school on Monday.

Principal Lopez tells ABC-7 that one classroom in particular had 13 leaks, “a lot of them we had to put buckets so it wouldn’t get the floors flooded.”

But classrooms in what is considered the older section of the school wasn’t the only area hit, water also seeped through the roof of the brand new gym.

Lopez adds that they were able to find the leaks before kids began class.

Accordingly, Principal Lopez says the reason there wasn’t much flooding is because during the hard-hitting rainstorms, school officials kept checking on the campus, working proactively to make sure water didn’t make it from the roof to the floor.

Lopez additionally tells ABC-7, “We just had to pull together as a team and we realized there was a deadline…so if that meant we would work until Sunday that is what were going to do.”

Desert View Middle School was just one of more than 40 YISD schools to suffer damage from Storm 2006.

Socorro Independent School District reports that about 25 of its schools are dealing with the impact of the storm, most have leaky roofs.

ABC-7 tried getting information from EPISD, but no district official returned our phone calls.