The Wichita school district will close a portion of its oldest high school this summer for flooring and foundation repairs.
The work at East High School will affect the first level of the former Roosevelt Junior High, which is the oldest part of East’s campus.
Steve Noble, chief operations officer for the district, said concrete in that section is causing problems.
“We found deteriorating concrete that's separating from the floors. There are falling concrete joists and concrete throughout the supports of that floor underneath,” he said.
Noble said most of the issues are from the original construction of the building, which first opened in 1921.
“This school now holds more than 2,300 students, [who] have different needs than when East and the now-connected Roosevelt Junior High were built,” he said.
Noble said the building is safe, but the $8.5 million in repairs need to be completed as soon as possible.
Starting this summer, crews will replace the hallway floor and sub-floor in that area. The district anticipates the hallways will be ready at the beginning of August, in time for the new school year.
After the hallways are finished, crews will begin foundation work in classrooms and offices in the affected area.
That means a handful of classrooms and administrative offices will have to temporarily relocate elsewhere on campus for the next school year, said East High Principal Sara Richardson.
“I think by the time we're all said and done, honestly, we're going to have to displace and move about 15 staff here,” she said.
“But we're going to come together, kind of as a family, like we've done in the past, and get them packed and ready to go so they can vacate those spaces” by the end of this school year, she said.
The upper floors in the former Roosevelt Junior High section are structurally solid, the district said, and officials are continuing to monitor them.
Over the past five years, the district said it has spent around $40 million on foundation work at East and North — the two oldest high schools in Wichita. In 2021, the district temporarily closed East’s science wing for structural repairs.
In December, the district also had to move students and staff out of the former Chester Lewis Academic Learning Center due to unsafe structural conditions. They’re now at the former Cleaveland Elementary School building. The district plans to demolish the Chester Lewis building this summer.
Superintendent Kelly Bielefeld said the district’s capital outlay funds are sometimes stretched thin by maintaining older high schools.
“Every year we budget about $20 million of our capital outlay funds for projects such as this … and North and East have absorbed a large amount of that for all sorts of issues,” he said. “Our capital budget can only go so far in maintaining all of our 85-plus buildings across the district.”
A key project in an anticipated November bond referendum is preserving East, North and the district’s other older high schools. The goal is to be more proactive with the buildings, the district said, to prevent large, unexpected repairs.
“A successful bond issue would give us funds that we need to do restoration work at East and at North, along with several other strategic projects across the district,” Bielefeld said. “Doing that also frees up capital funds for all of the other schools in the district that might not be impacted by the bond.”
