Pioneer School fence replacement planned

 A section of damaged fence bordering Pioneer School’s playground on West 7th Street has set in motion a plan to replace the entire stretch of 4-foot chain link fence with a six-foot high structure sometime in the coming months.

 Describing the plan to the Weiser School District Board of Trustees on Jan. 8, Superintendent Kenneth Dewlen said, “We’re going to replace the 4-foot fence with a 6-foot fence along 7th, and along the side by the Glenn House, so it’s all standardized, and will be 6-feet high all the way around.”

 Owned by the school district, the Glenn House is also on West 7th Street and located at the north edge of Pioneer’s large playground.

 Plans for improvements around Pioneer School don’t stop with the fence.

 “Over on the 6th Street side, where employees pull in, it gets real icy there, and there isn’t good drainage,” Dewlen described. “We’re working in conjunction with the City of Weiser, in which we’ll add some curbing and gutter and they’re going to redo the street in front of it so water will continue to push down (along the gutter), and it will stop being an ice rink there for cars, and for students and parents.

 “And, last, but not least, right now, if you’ve been over there, there are green t-posts with barbed wire,” he added. “We’re going to get rid of that. We’re going to take part of the 4-foot fence coming off of West 7th Street, and move it over with the proper posts, and the 4-foot fence to make it look more presentable than those t-bars and barbed wire.”

 Dewlen said the replacement fence will line up against the new curbing.

 Trustee Jon Walker asked if a sidewalk was planned in the project.

 “We didn’t plan that because of the expense of the sidewalk, but later on we will look at that, as well as curbing and gutter further on down,” Dewlen said. “Right now it’s just a 50-foot piece, but adding down further in the future. What it will do is move (run off) water on down, but we are looking at finishing that whole area.”

 The school’s employee parking lot, located east of the building’s lunch room/gymnasium, is a mix of packed dirt and gravel surface most of the year, and some years rutted with potholes left from wet or snowy winters.

 Trustee Jonathon Lerew asked about the lot’s ingress/egress point on West 6th Street.

 “Great question,” Dewlen said. “What Michael (Thatcher, the district’s maintenance supervisor) and I have found is we’re missing a gate.”

 Each of the school district’s four buildings has an evacuation plan for students, and Pioneer’s plan is for the student body to move across that lot to a specified location on West 6th where they would then be picked up by school buses.

 Dewlen pointed out the ungated, and basically unfenced, area is all too often used as a neighborhood dog run.

 “If you have to evacuate Pioneer School, you have some 420 students trying to get through that area,” Dewlen said.” The biggest thing is there’s no gate and what is happening now is everybody is letting their dogs run around there. I spent 30 minutes the other day cleaning my shoes off after looking at the area. We found the gate and we’re going to reattach it with a padlock that every teacher will have a key to unlock, in case of emergency.”

 “Between that gate, and getting the north end of the playground fenced off, it should be a major deterrent for people to bebop across the playground in the middle of school,” Thatcher said. “I saw that when I worked there, people taking a shortcut and walking right through the middle of recess. This will be a very good deterrent.”

 Walker, who spent at least a couple of decades as Pioneer’s custodian, recollected the transition when West 6th Street was extended to below the Galloway Canal, and the apartments and housing development that grew into the neighborhood.

 “I remember when we first tried that (blocking off the grounds) down there,” Walker said. “We had quite an uproar from the apartments.”

 “That’s okay,” Dewlen said. “That’s what I’m here for.”

 Chairman Jim Brush added, “We’ll answer those questions as they come. When we’re talking about the safety of our kids, it’s more important than someone having access to walk across (the school grounds).