Money arrives to rebuild Grand Bay school

More than a year and a half after Hurricane Katrina damaged much of Grand Bay Middle School, the Mobile County school system received $4 million from the state to rebuild.

Construction can start in about two weeks, officials announced.

"It's great news," said Grand Bay Principal Suzanne Crist. "We're just excited that we're finally getting started."

All of Grand Bay's sixth-graders have been attending class in about a dozen portables behind the school. And, since there is no longer a cafeteria, lunch has been brought in every day from nearby Castlen Elementary School.

Students have been eating outside on picnic tables or in "cafes" set up inside portables.

Huey Belaire, facilities coordinator for Mobile County schools, said the system received $3.2 million from the Alabama Department of Community and Economic Affairs sometime last week. And the school system got another $800,000 from the state's Public Schools and College Authority on April 13.

The school system received the funds less than two weeks after the Press-Register ran a story revealing that rebuilding funds promised by Gov. Bob Riley back in August still had not come in. That promise came a year after Katrina.

Grand Bay's story was much different from that of two Enterprise schools damaged in a deadly March 1 tornado. Six weeks after that storm, the Alabama Legislature voted to secure $32 million in state money to rebuild those two schools.

State and local officials said late last month that Grand Bay's money was going through a bureaucratic process, during which several agencies, including the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Mobile County Commission, had to sign off.

Now, all that's left is for the contractor, Rod Cooke Construction Incorporated, to sign the contract and begin work. "We have all the funding, and the contractor's ready to go to work," Belaire said.

Construction should take another year and a half, officials have said, meaning the school will be completed during the fall of 2008.

"We'll get that school back up and running," said Rod Cooke of the construction firm that bears his name.

When Katrina made landfall Aug. 29, 2005, the roof of Grand Bay Middle School's main building came off, allowing the ample rain to pour in and extensively damage the floors and ceilings. Mold quickly covered the walls.

Riley toured the damage a few days later, assuring school officials that local money would not have to be spent to rebuild.

Grand Bay's students were sent about 15 miles away to Causey Middle School in west Mobile, where they attended class on a split-shift schedule for about four months.

Students have since returned to their school, with the seventh- and eighth-graders attending class in a new building that the Mobile County Public School System had already planned to build before Katrina.

The school board received $1.7 million from its insurance company, which was $4 million less than it needed to rebuild. With no word on whether any disaster relief funding, state or otherwise, would come through, officials demolished the main building last year, preparing to go it alone if necessary.

Crist said she learned that the school system received the money last week, but, because school has been out for spring break, she has not been able to tell her students. She said she plans to make such an announcement over the school's intercom when the students return Monday.

"They'll be excited. I know their parents will be," Crist said.

During construction, the schools' student drop-off and pick-up lines will have to be rerouted. And students will have to get used to the construction noise. But, Crist said, "this is a good thing."