LA MESA, Calif. — Monday’s rain storms across San Diego County hit the La Mesa-Spring Valley school district schools hard. The district had to let students home early because of the flooding on school campuses.
FOX 5 was able to tour two of the elementary schools, where some of the base boards have been removed and large dryers and humidifiers are drying out the classrooms.
“Under this pathway is all gone,” said Janet Josa, Kempton Literacy Academy principal.
Heavy rains in a short period of time damaged all 21 La Mesa Spring Valley District schools. Monday’s storm sent students home early, and kept them home on Tuesday.
“Some kids, we had to act quickly, so some backpacks were left behind and lunch boxes,” Josa said.
At Kempton Literacy Academy, the water from an overflowing storm drain on Kempton Road swallowed up the kinder area. One kindergarten classroom in that area was especially flooded.
“And on that building, you can see the level where the water went up on the side of the building,” Josa explains. “And we had to evacuate students from a window from that classroom.”
On Monday, Kempton made schedule adjustments, such as moving recess indoors. The principal eventually made the decision to tell all kids to stay inside to avoid walking across a saturated campus.
The water quickly became devastating.
“We’ve got books that have to be thrown out because they are completely soaking wet, that’s the major impact, a lot of teachers put so much heart and work and effort into decorating their classrooms, and having materials that look nice and things for kids,” Josa said.
Over at Bancroft Elementary School, “What you see here was everywhere. You could not see the ground below,” said La Mesa Spring Valley School District Director of Business Services Robert Cochran as he explained an area of classrooms.
Cochran said on Monday the Bancroft principal called to say nearly all classrooms had flooded.
By Tuesday, layers of mud still blanket classrooms.
“So all of the work that is being done in regards to the floors and clearing slippery mud and slippery conditions is all critical stuff we have been working on today,” Cochran said.
Work today that comes with accolades to the staff and students.
“It’s a lot of trauma out there, I praise them for being calm and working together, to get through this,” Cochran said.
“It takes a team to make things happen in a crisis situation, it was an emergency situation yesterday, but we had to make a lot of decisions real quickly,” Josa said.
Kempton students will return to school on Wednesday, but the kindergarteners will return to different classrooms, until the kinder area is sanitized and deemed safe for students and staff.
Bancroft will not open tomorrow, but the students will attend another school until Bancroft is ready and cleaned.