Logan Elementary students expected to spend next school year at Logan Middle School
- Jun 3
- 6 min read
Students at Logan Elementary School are expected to begin the 2026-2027 school year at Logan Middle School as recovery efforts continue following a fire in February.
A.M. Stone & Robert Fields | WVOW News
LOGAN Logan County Schools is looking to improve different aspects of many school facilities in the county this summer, but Logan Elementary students are preparing, for what school officials say is inevitable, to remain at Logan Middle School.
During the final meeting for the month of May, The Logan County Board of Education was updated on the many different facility projects that are ongoing for the district. Andrew Dotson, The Director of Operational Support, noted that some projects have been completed while others are just getting underway.
Dotson started the update with Logan Elementary. The school caught fire back in February. The fire was contained, but the damage associated from the blaze is still not clear.
Since then, all the Logan Elementary students have moved to Logan Middle School.
According to Dotson, clean-up following the fire is not as easy as it sounds. He said the district retained a cleaning company early on following the fire, but that insurance felt a cleaning company was premature.
“The air quality remains poor in the building and opening a few windows and wiping down walls will not significantly make the situation better inside the school,” Dotson told board members. “Every item with a motor or a fan, when turned back on, will emit soot and particles back into the air.”
Dotson said every PTAC unit, the wall mounted heating and air conditioning units for each classroom, will need to be replaced at a minimum. Moreover, Dotson’s report outlined structural damage in addition to damages to the school’s electrical, fire alarm and networking systems.
The process with insurance is a slow one. Dotson told board members the district is waiting on the numbers to determine the cost and scope of the work involved. A current concern is whether or not the building has to meet code for students to return. The district went through a similar issue last year with the cost of bringing Verdunville Elementary up to code following a slip on the hill behind the school. Ultimately, Verdunville was closed. Many of those students are now enrolled in their third school in two years.
Dotson said that he has been meeting weekly with the district’s insurance adjuster.
One parent in attendance, Shana Thompson, said that while she appreciated the update on the school, she still has concerns.
“Our community truly rallied around Logan Elementary during this transition that was announced to be temporary,” Thompson said. “And we are thankful that the move went well and thank the students for welcoming them into the middle school. We are still very, very hopeful that this move will indeed be temporary.”
Her concerns range from the lack of separate gym spaces for physical education classes to bathroom facilities and accommodations for young elementary students.
“Bathrooms are a huge issue,” Thompson said. “They’re not the right size for the little ones. There are not enough bathrooms. They’re not separate enough. Students are being told that they can’t go when they need to. They need to wait and go on group breaks and things like that.”
Many elementary schools, including Logan Elementary, have bathrooms attached to individual classrooms. Thompson alleged that teachers are now losing instructional time by pausing class to monitor each bathroom trip and accompany students down the hallway.
She conceded that while the middle school is probably big enough to temporarily accommodate the number of elementary students, it is not set up to accommodate their needs.
“Hopefully, insurance will come back and it will be positive, and you all can move forward on fighting to return Logan Elementary to our old school," Thompson said. "We ask that you just take off the temporary goggles of what might be happening right now, fight for what’s gonna happen long term. I’m not just thinking about my children. I’m thinking about my grandchildren. The many generations that we have to come.”
At the time of the fire, Superintendent Sonya White said it was important to get students back in the classroom. She said it is now important to address many of the matters Mrs. Thompson brought up during her public comment time. The superintendent said there is more room for classes at Logan Middle. The school is not at capacity with only 600 students in a building made for a thousand or more students. White said there are other classrooms more conducive for pre-k students.
“There are rooms in the middle that have bathrooms built in and that we can move those to,” White said.
Moving forward, Superintendent White said it is very likely Logan Elementary will begin this fall at Logan Middle.
“I mean, it would have to be a miracle,” White said. “I talked to the department right after the fire, it would have been a miracle if we could have started work that day to get the kids back into the building by August.”
Also in the facilities update, county maintenance crews recently replaced a 15 ton HVAC unit on the roof of Chapmanville Middle School. According to Dotson, the maintenance department stepped up and said they could save the county money by installing the system in-house. They rented a crane to remove the old unit and replace it with a new one. Dotson said the move saved the county around $60,000 by not bidding out the project.
Logan High and Ralph R. Willis Career and Technical Center will soon have bids go out for new asphalt. He said the lots will have to be milled up before new asphalt goes down, with the two worst parking lots taken into consideration. Bids are expected to be put out this summer.
Speaking of Logan High, a two-year project to update the electrical systems, fire alarm and HVAC was completed in April. The project was around $8 million and involved a complete rewiring of the building, replacement of main distribution panels and all subpanels.
Projects are not limited to improvements and upgrades. Several buildings are in need of demolition, and Dotson said he and Superintendent White are putting together a list of buildings that are liabilities for the county.
“Sort of like what’s the greatest need,” Dotson said.
He said deactivated chimneys at several schools need to be removed in addition to roofing and drainage issues.
The roofing has been an issue at the football building at Willis-Nisbet Stadium. The older part of the building has issues with the wooden trusses expanding with the temperature and popping nails loose. This facilitated the mobile locker rooms for the Logan football program last season. Along with the roofing problem, Dotson said drainage was an issue. The water runs from the gutters and under the foundation of the building, which he says is happening at nearly all buildings in the district
“We can’t fix anything else,” Dotson said, “until we fix the drainage issues at all of the schools. They have just never been maintained. They’re stopped up. They’re collapsed in the walls. Issues like that."
Other facility issues the county plans on addressing include the Central Office on Holly Avenue. According to Dotson, all the water lines at the Central Office are corroded. The water lines are expected to be completed in July.
PHOTOS | A.M. Stone, WVOW News and file
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