Flooded Iowa schools ready to reopen

(The Center Square) - It was just two months ago that Rock Valley schools were devastated by floods, but officials said Thursday they will be ready to reopen next week.

Historic flooding in June left many homes damaged or ruined, and Rock Valley Community School District buildings were unusable.

"In June when the flood hit, I was at a bit of a loss: ‘Where do we go? We have kids coming back here in two months.’ Every square inch of our district K-12 building was inundated by the flood and the contents were destroyed,” said Rock Valley Community School District Superintendent Matt Van Voorst. “So to be quite frank, it felt a little bit lonely at first, but that changed quickly.”

Providing a way for students to learn in person was highlighted as a major goal in recovery efforts, Voorst said.

“We came up with three priorities,” said Voorst. “Number one was provide a safe and healthy learning environment. Number two, we needed to get our learning spaces done first and number three, we wanted our students together in person. So we hit the ground running.”

A new temporary building was constructed in just seven weeks in order to keep as many students as possible on campus while work continues on the main building, Gov. Kim Reynolds said.

“This building makes it possible to bring the students in this community back together and again it helps them to make a really big step forward in getting their life back to normal,” said Reynolds.

The temporary building has six classrooms that will hold 150 middle school students.

“In the days following the flood it really did seem unlikely that we would be able to open on time or bring most of the students back to school. But if I know one thing about this community: where there is a will, there is a way,” Reynolds said.

Between flooding and tornados in April and more flooding in June, over 5,000 homes were damaged. Among those, more than 2,000 were estimated to have significant damage.

Approximately 40% of homes in Rock Valley were impacted, according to the governor.

Several programs are addressing these challenges. A $10 million State Disaster Recovery New Housing Grant Program is funding construction for new single and multi-family homes. The first round of awards has already put $7.2 million toward 175 new homes, the governor said.

Over $3 million of that is going toward new homes, specifically in Rock Valley, according to the governor. A program for homeowners is providing awards of up to $50,000 for repairs or rehabilitation.