Evacuation

Henry's school has had to evacuate!

The school has been struggling for years with poor indoor air quality, and despite various repairs, things have not improved. This autumn, serious mould problems were found and the town decided that the school would have to be evacuated while more thorough analysis and renovations were done.

The schoolchildren have now decamped to a small village of cabins around the school playing field.

Below some photos.

Henry and Thomas on the new school yard.

The boys approaching the row of cabins which includes Henry's classroom.

Henry at the entrance to the classrooms for classes 3M and 4M.

Inside the 'new' classroom.

It is not known how long the teaching will be in the cabins. They have been rented for one year, with an option for a further year.

The whole school system in Lappeenranta is in flux with many plans. The local polytechnic, in its latest incarnation as Saimaa University of Applied Sciences, is to move to be adjacent to Lappeenranta University of Technology (the latter is a university, the former a college in disguise); Armila school is supposed to move to the premises vacated by the polytechnic, which become a school centre, together with Peltola school; and the fate of Henry's school, Alakylän koulu, depends on how much it costs to fix the school - either things continue as before, or the whole school moves to the big school centre, or the music classes move to the school centre and the other pupils continue in the bits of the school that are not dangerous to pupils' health. The above is based on my reading of the local newspaper, Etelä-Saimaa, but what will really happen and how much this will all cost nobody knows.