Rush Springs School Floods Day After Voters Kill Bond For New Building

Students in Rush Springs spent the first half of their day outside Thursday, because the school was flooded. Just the day before the town voted against a bond to build a new building, cafeteria and storm shelter.

The middle school was built in the 1950s, and many believe it is time for a new one.

“Through here was an entire puddle and it went all the way to the front of this classroom and then it seeped through my classroom,” Rush Springs Middle School English teacher Alica Jobe said.

In pictures from Thursday the floor of the Rush Springs Middle School is so shiny it looks like waxed marble, but that shine is water - and a lot of it. And the floor is anything but fancy.

“Now in addition to the glued together carpet, we’ll have this beautiful water stain,” she said.

Wednesday the town voted no on a 9 million dollar bond to build a new school and cafeteria for the third time, and ironically enough the next morning teachers walked into this.

“It was a lot of water,” Jobe said. “We had to bring in wet vacs.”

A broken pipe from the boys restroom flooded the halls and classrooms.

“My seventh grader, who is in the middle school building, actually texted me the next morning and said, ‘Well, mom, we’re outside the school waiting, because the school is flooded, and we can’t go in right now,’” Sara Abbott said.

It's a modest campus, but some of the people who voted ‘no’ say the bond amount wasn't and say the project should be done one building at a time and not all at once which would cut the price tag nearly in half.

“We’re all taxpayers,” voter Dan Williams said. “We want to keep Rush Springs going, but, again, how it’s being done is what we disagree with.”

“I just think that the number overwhelms people from a small town of 1,500 looking at a $9-million dollar bond,” parent Shannon Long said.

It’s a small investment some say considering what's at stake.

“If we are not willing to invest our treasures into the heart beat that heartbeat will cease to exist and will cease to beat, and this community will dry up,” Abbott said.