Some Recent Photos of the Center. Sunday 9/4/2016

We rush ordered new cabinets. They were delivered late Thursday, and installed on Friday,

It may not look like it, but the rooms are cleaning up well. All the classrooms have had new drywall installed, primed and painted. The wall protection where the cots go is being installed (Friday and Tuesday 9/6).

 

The kids' gardens are doing well! With the heat this week, I am not sure if the tomatoes will still be good by opening day. The egg plant looks good and the sunflower has grown tall - like 6' tall.


The hallways should look pretty good opening day. The grey wall covering (acrovyn) will most likely not be installed yet. We can do that later in September. Again, the focus was on the classrooms to that we could reopen!



This classroom is lonely and would like to have the students back soon.

I will post more pictures on Tuesday and Wednesday once the classrooms get set up.

Mike

Opening Day in Announced

Opening Day is Monday Sept 12!

A letter went out to parents in the last day or so with details of the center opening via LifeCubby. I will copy the text below. Sorry, the formatting is not as polished in the blog.

The End is Near… In a Good Way!
Update on the Ireland Road Center Rebuilding and Expected Opening Date.

Here is the big news first, then I will explain the details.

• The Ireland Road Center will open on Monday September 12 for all students.
• Afterschool Care may be available a couple of days earlier, like Thursday or Friday (9/8 or 9/9), if parents want to change mid-week. 
• Care may begin earlier for those rooms because they were repaired first. 
• After School care only. 
• Any additional information will be sent out through LifeCubby. 

What to Expect: “Like it never even happened” – Well, we are not quite there yet.

• The repair efforts were focused on what was necessary to restore a safe, clean learning environment for the children. Everything was cleaned / sanitized. What needed to be repaired / replaced was. 
• If the classroom supplies look a little low, please know that the order has been placed and should arrive soon.   
• Continuing repairs – We didn’t want to delay reopening for non-student area or cosmetic repairs. So those will be ongoing. 
• Personal belongings – Unfortunately, school and personal belongings alike were swept up in the water damage. Please plan on bringing in a complete replacement set of clothing, supplies, etc. Medication was not damaged, but just about everything else was touched. We will sort out what was saved once we re-open. 
• Student Files – Many were damaged. We will send you a letter if we need anything replaced. 

Rebuilding Details – I will continue to post details of the clean-up effort on our blog.
- GKIrelandUpdates.blogspot.com.

Evaluation of the Response – While we don’t plan on doing this again anytime soon, we would like your feedback on the experience so that we can improve our emergency preparedness in the future. Ireland Road parents as well as parents from other centers are encouraged to complete the survey. Please provide your comments at www.surveymonkey.com/r/GKFlood

Questions – If you have any questions, email is the best way to communicate with us at the moment. Jessica’s email is director.ireland@growingkids.com

Thank you, Thank you!
Hopefully, the flood and its consequences will quickly become a distant memory. Thank you to all of the parents, children and staff members for their patience and understanding during this rebuilding process.

Summary of the Rebuilding Process

It has been a busy week so I am not sure if I have repeated myself on what exactly happened. So, let me do a quick recap.

Center Flooded Late Monday Night / Early Tuesday Morning. 
- Our internal cameras show the water entering the building after midnight. The video shuts off for several hours, presumably due to loss of electricity.

Tuesday Morning
- We access the building on Tuesday morning. I have an earlier post about that. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
- The clean up process began right away Tuesday morning. Staff members, family and friends came to work.
- We removed destroyed items, Saved what we could. Using mops and shop-vacs, we removed what water we could and mopped up the dirt.
- 1st Choice water remediation company was onsite that morning to start removing the water with their professional equipment.
- Majority Builders was onsite that morning as well.
- The water line outside the building was about 3 feet deep, the waterline inside the building was about 9 inches deep.
- The challenge was to dry the building as soon as possible to prevent any more water damage and prevent mold.

The Rebuilding Process
- We made the decision that all the interior walls were water damaged enough to require the bottom 2' of drywall and all interior & exterior insulation had to be removed.
- Further, all base cabinets (classroom, offices, kitchen, etc) were damaged as well.
- The rest of the week was spent doing demolition.
- We worked closely with the water remediation company and the environmental engineers to make sure that the building would be clean and safe for our children when they returned.

Starting to put Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again!
The demo process wrapped early the week of 8/22. We could finally start replacing what we had been taking out. On walls that were approved by the water remediation company and the environmental engineers, we could install new insulation and drywall.

The interior walls were all approved, but the exterior walls (which were exposed to the greatest amount of water) were still not approved. Later Friday afternoon (8/26) some of the exterior walls were OK'd, but others will have to wait until Monday to be checked. Better Safe Than Sorry, but it takes a while. 

The guys from HG Christman are hanging and finishing sheet rock pretty quick. Which is good, because every room in the building, including the bathrooms had walls removed.

Another construction update coming soon. As always, please don't hesitate to send me any questions. 

Mike.

More Than I Ever Wanted to Know About Water.

Ok, so apparently there are primarily two ways to dry out a building (or a basement). One is refrigeration - basically Air Conditioning. This works well for removing small amounts of humidity. If you really want to dry something out, the second method of Evaporation does the trick. Turn up the heat. Even though it has been hot outside, the air has been very humid. The get hot, dry air, turn on the furnace. We have had the heat on at the center since the day of the flood - around 84 degrees, with a lot of air movement.

When the weather person says "It's 104 in Arizona, but it is a DRY heat." Yeah, a lot like that. If you ever need to dry out a basement, turn on the heat for a couple of hours. It really works. Here is a 36" fan moving air in the front office.

Mike

Not So Sorry to See You Go....

We were able to pull the dumpster out on Friday. Most of the demolition wrapped earlier this week. We had a lot of drywall and cabinets to toss. Here is the upside - we are getting new cabinets and freshly painted classrooms!

The Clean Team!

As we clean out and rebuild, a wonderful team has assembled to get this job done. It is a collection of teachers, parents, family / friends, contractors who are all moving together to get us back. I am going to list as many as I can think of at the moment. My apologies if I miss anyone. In no particular order:

- Majority Builders
- 1st Choice Fire & Water Restoration
- ACM Engineering and Environmental Service
- H.G. Christman Construction
- Ed Alexander Cleaning
- Living Stones Church on Donmoyer
- Meadows Edge Elementary School

- The Growing Kids staff at the Ireland Road school
- The Growing Kids staff at the schools on State Road 23, N. Bendix Drive, West Bristol Street (Elkhart) and Elkhart Road (Goshen) for hosting students and teachers.
- The Growing Kids schools in Valpo, Chesterton, and Bristol are too far away to host any students, but are helping with the rebuilding efforts, too.
- The Growing Kids Management Office for making sure the wide variety administrative things keep happening.

- Parents - Thank you also for sticking with us. We realize this is a disruption for your families as well and appreciate your patience and understanding.

Here is a picture of the Clean Team on Day 1 when we were walking in water.


Friends and family have joined us in the clean up effort. We hand-washed every toy and material that remained in the center.
 

The Emergency Response

Well, we thought we had a pretty good emergency response plan in place prior to the flood. But you never really know if you have thought of everything until you need to activate it, then it gets tested.

Our primary objectives were
- secure the environment so no one gets hurt
- provide for the welfare of the students and parents
- provide for the welfare of our staff
- restore the school so life gets back to normal.

Fortunately, the emergency happened at night so no students or teachers were at risk.

Once we realized that the school would be unusable for a while, we wanted to offer alternate care for our students and parents. Our options included
  - Care at other area Growing Kids Centers
  - A near-by church that rented us space for our infants and toddlers
  - Meadows Edge elementary school that allowed us to use their gym for after-school students.

Further, we wanted to take care of our staff. Our teachers were upset that all their hard work in getting ready for Back To School had been destroyed. It really looked great - the kids were excited for all the projects and displays in the classrooms. The teachers were also worried about their students - the change in their daily routine, making sure they were OK and not upset. We offered our teachers temporary positions at other Growing Kids centers to provide familiar faces for many of their displaced students, and to minimize any financial strain for the teachers as well. As available, teachers have been helping with the clean up effort at their school on Ireland Road. The entire Growing Kids team across all centers have been helping - welcoming new students, working with teachers from other schools, meeting new parents.

Getting the school back together is a whole other discussion. Needless to say, we moved as quickly as we could in identifying the depth (no pun intended) of the problem, and the best remedy. Reopening quickly is important. More important that the water damage be cleaned up properly so that the school is a safe learning environment for the kids moving forward. Doing it right has added some time to the repairs. We will keep you posted.

We have been planning for something like this to happen and we have been preparing. We have been shifting major systems to online / cloud-based providers so our other centers could provide support. Some of the systems we have put into place to respond to an extended evacuation situation include:
  - Using ProCare for school administration: This online software allows us to access student information from other Growing Kids locations even when Ireland Road Center's computers were all destroyed.
  - LifeCubby for parent communication: This online service has enabled us to maintain communication with parents, and maintain continuity of the care for the children.
  - Staff Training and Safety Procedures - We have developed emergency procedures and staff have been training in the event something happens. Well, something happened.
  - Facebook - Since so many parents and family members are on Facebook, it has become a useful tool to communicate.

I haven't listed them all, but I hope you get the idea. After this is all over, we will do an analysis to see what could be improved. If you have any ideas now, please let me know Garatoni@GrowingKids.com.

A final word - While plans and preparations are good to have. it requires people to react, adjust, and make things happen. Please accept my heartfelt thanks to students, parents, teachers, and friends of the school for their help, patience, and understanding.

Thanks.

Mike