Students evacuated from Bluffton classrooms for referendum construction fumes, district says
Students at Bluffton’s River Ridge Academy were pulled out of classrooms Friday morning as fumes from construction equipment wafted into the school, district spokesman Jim Foster said.
The construction at River Ridge is the district’s first major construction project from November’s $345 million school bond referendum.
The fumes were gas exhaust from large fans brought in to smooth the concrete that will form one of the three bases for the K-8 school’s classroom expansions.
The school will have 12 new classrooms, expected to hold 400 students and be substantially completed by Sept. 1, at the new wing and two extensions to existing wings.
River Ridge principal Bryan Ryman pulled students out of 11 kindergarten and first grade classrooms on the school’s “400 wing” as the gas dissipates, Foster said.
They went to an early lunch and recess before being put in the school’s mobile classrooms, as the fourth-grade classes typically housed there are on a field trip, Foster said.
This story was originally published February 28, 2020 at 11:40 AM.