Structural damage keeps Elizabeth Ziegler Public School closed into March break

Elizabeth Ziegler Public School in Waterloo will remain closed into March break after a slab of concrete fell off the building’s structure.

Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) originally closed the elementary school on Tuesday, expecting it to be in effect for a couple days, but the closure has remained in place through the remainder of the week.

“The greatest gift is that no one was injured or even close to it when it fell, so we were very fortunate in that regard,” Bill Lemon, Associate Director of Business Services with WRDSB, said.

The closure has impacted all of the roughly 450 students who attend the school regularly, who are learning virtually from home for the duration of the closure. WRDSB has said in a statement that all before and after school programs through the school also remain canceled.

Lemon said safety was the number one concern in regards to closing the school, with testing needed on further portions of the structure to ensure it doesn’t become a risk later in the future.

“The inspection, as I understand it, is on the structural elements of the building. Those would be the beams and the supports,” said Lemon. “You can probably imagine, like in a school setting, a lot of those are not exposed.”

He stated that engineering teams would need to enter into the more regularly populated portions of the school, with the depth of the inspections potentially causing a hassle if classes continued.

“Structural inspections were such that, in order to engage in those inspections, they were going to need access to parts of the school. That would have interfered with the learning environment so significantly that we needed to close the school,” he said.

While no school administrators want to have to send kids home, the disruption comes at a fortunate time, as March break means students will not be in the building for an extra week, reducing the chances of further impact on in-class learning.

“It gives us a little bit more runway to make those inquiries, make the plans, and then communicate to families. We are grateful for the opportunity for that gift of time,” Lemon said.

He stated that the full scale of costs associated with the inspections, repairs, and future structural repair costs are still unknown. He said the work has been contracted to an outside engineering team.

Further testing and inspections are still ongoing.