Mount Pleasant Delays Start To School For Some Students

Follow KDKA-TV: Facebook | Twitter

MOUNT PLEASANT, Pa. (KDKA) – Lots of kids in the Pittsburgh area are enjoying the last weekend of summer and getting ready for school to begin this coming week.

However, for some students in Mount Pleasant, school won't be starting until after Labor Day on Sept. 4.

Heavy rain and and an older building proved to not be the best combination at Mount Pleasant Junior Senior High School.

"We're erring on the side of caution. The most important thing to us is the safety of our kids, our teachers, our faculty and our employees," said John Sarnese, School Board President in the Mount Pleasant Area School District.

It will be a while longer before the 900 students at Mount Pleasant Junior Senior High School hit the books.

The District announced the wet summer took its toll.

"It's from heavy rain. I mean, we've had a tremendous amount of rain here," Sarnese said.

Sarnese explained that rain made its way into exterior windows causing water to get into some classrooms.

"We found some cracks and we didn't like what we saw, so we did some tests and the tests came back with some high humidity," Sarnese said.

After extensive testing, the classrooms will need to be cleaned and the windows caulked to get the 50-year-old school ready for another year.

"There are no health issues that we know of right now or anything else like that. That's why we're doing this," Sarnese said. "We plan on, it's going to be about a week."

Elementary schools in the district will begin Monday as planned.

Without knowing what the winter weather will bring, school officials are eager to get this school year started. Teacher's contracts also expire at the end of the month.