Status of Benton Elementary discussed following failed health inspection
A piece of piping removed from the inside of Benton Elementary School, which recently failed a health inspection.
BENTON, Tenn. (WDEF)- A few weeks ago, Benton Elementary School in Polk County received a 68 on its health inspection due to a variety of issues.
Monday night, their school board met for the first time since that news caused many questions in the community.
One parent, Kaitlyn Adams, had previously told us, “I was disgusted, there’s two things that came to mine immediately. It makes sense why she’s sick constantly. She could spend weeks out of school getting better and being healed, and then go back for one day and immediately she’s sick again and out of school for another week. They are there for seven hours a day, five days a week, and if you’re not taking them there you face legal consequences…. They think that it is safe to have to hold these hundreds of students. I think the doors should be closed until it can be fixed.”
Polk County Schools Superintendent, Dr. James Jones, says that a few weeks ago when his office received that failing health inspection report from the elementary school, his team went to work and that most of those issues have now been corrected.
However, he says that long-term the solution to this problem is not going to be easy.
Dr. Jones told the school board, “We are really trying the best we can with a really tough situation. I wouldn’t say impossible.”
He explained to the board Monday evening that most of the issues brought up in that health inspection report have been fixed by his team.
Dr. Jones told us, “We have those items fixed now. There were some drainage issues. It was never sewer. There were some water fountain issues, but all those are fixed. Now, she came back on Friday and did a recheck and everything checked out.”
The site manager for Polk County Schools, Adam Stone, showed some of the drainage piping that they removed, along with what was found inside of those pipes that feed water fountains and batgriina,
Stone, holding a bag filled with unidentifiable black material, said, “This is falling down in the pipes and settling down in the pipes. We have drainage problems there, I mean there’s a lot of problems. Every drain we have in that building is giving us issues.”
He added that he has gotten numerous complaints about the smell of the building, something we have heard from multiple parents.
Stone said while several of the problematic pipes have been disconnected, those in usage get water put in them just once a day, which he says isn’t enough to deal with demand.
He said, “At lunchtime all the girls were going to the restroom and flushing the toilets multiple times, and because we only put water in there in the mornings, the plumbing trap beneath was becoming dry. I think that is what was causing the smell.”
Dr. Jones says that the school is at least 80 years old, and that it needs to be replaced.
He says it would cost $90 million to build this along with two other schools that need to be replaced, on land purchased by the county next to Polk County High School.
Dr. Jones said, “We’re a very poor rural county. We don’t have a large tax base coming in. We don’t have industry, and so our county commission is behind the eight ball. They are really having a tough time with that large a number.”
He added that the school system is not benefitting from the county’s wildly popular whitewater rafting industry along the Ocoee River.
Dr. Jones said, “Unfortunately our whitewater rafting is on federal land and we receive almost nothing from that if you can believe that. We have millions of people coming to be tourists in our county and we receive almost nothing from that.”
He added that it is unlikely the county would see any outside help.
