Union Middle School to reopen Tuesday on split-session schedule

A Sandy firefighter walks out of Union Middle School following a small electrical fire on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2019. | Steve Griffin, Deseret News

SALT LAKE CITY — Classes will resume at Union Middle School on Tuesday, although work will continue on the school’s upper floor where a small electrical fire broke out around 5 a.m. Thursday.

Classes will be held in split sessions on the school’s ground floor, with sixth graders and half of seventh graders attending the morning session, while eighth graders and the remaining half of seventh graders will attend in the afternoon.

Under the temporary schedule, students will attend four 50-minute core classes.

Canyons School District officials say the split session schedule will remain in place for possibly four weeks, but it is dependent on how quickly the mitigation work can be completed.

District officials made the call to resume classes after receiving results of air quality tests which “came back in acceptable levels,” said district spokesman Jeff Haney on Monday.

It is not yet known if the Utah State Board of Education will extend to Union Middle School a waiver from the state’s attendance rule that requires Utah schools to conduct school 180 days and 990 hours a year.

School was called off Thursday, Friday and Monday as officials assessed the building’s condition and launched work to ventilate the building, mitigate smoke damage and clean soot that had spread throughout the building.

If the waiver is not granted, one option may be temporarily suspending the school’s Friday late starts and using that time instead for instruction, Haney said.

About 850 students attend the school, which is 50 years old, Haney said. It is scheduled for replacement under the $283 million school construction bond approved by voters in 2017.

Haney said Sandy firefighters “did an amazing job in containing the fire to one room,” a sixth grade social studies classroom on the school’s upper level.

That part of the building will be sealed off as workers continue mitigation efforts, he said. Much of the effort has been devoted to cleaning soot-covered desks, countertops, tables, books, walls and contents of lockers, he said.

The ventilation systems for the two levels operate independently, which helped to ensure the lower level of the school could be safely occupied, he said.

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