Planada Elementary School continues to rebuild as students get ready to return

MERCED COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) -- Planada Elementary School is continuing to rebuild after it suffered extensive damage during last month's storms.

Schools can be the heart of the community, and Planada Elementary has not skipped a beat.

The school suffered major flooding damage during a series of storms in January.

Despite the devastation, staff and students are resilient.

"At this point, we are trying to make the best of a terrible situation and come out much stronger than we were prior to the situation," said Jose Gonzalez, Superintendent of Planada Elementary School District.

A situation where classes were on pause after the campus dealt with severe flooding.

26 classrooms, the main administrative office and the technology server room all suffered water damage.

At one point, the library was taken over by two feet of water.

The superintendent says the school's newer classrooms were the only ones that didn't get flooded.

Right now, TK through 2nd graders are on this campus, but the 3rd through 5th graders are at Cesar Chavez Middle School.

For families who have students at both, they are grateful the schools are less than two miles apart.

"It's a little inconvenient but I'd rather do that than have to take them Merced or somewhere else, you know," said Lupe Barriga as she was picking up her grandkids.

Some of the school's Staff and Students have also been displaced from their homes, making going to class every day an escape from reality.

"You may have lost at home, but you didn't here. And we are going to make sure you are okay," said Maria Nava, lead school secretary.

Restoration crews are hard at work to bring the building up to code.

Gonzales says CAL OES was initially hoping to mobilize and provide a temporary school.

"It didn't make sense to spend 16 million on a temporary school and then two weeks later these classrooms be rebuilt," Gonzalez explained.

In two weeks, the school will start to phase students back in the first week of March, starting with the 4th graders.

School officials say it could take between 6-10 months to fully restore the damage.