Despite the significant amount of rainfall this summer season, local schools in the East Lycoming area were up and running and made their opening school dates.

Muncy School District was one of the first to return along with Montoursville School District. According to Superintendent, Craig Skaluba, the buildings sustained no water problems or mold. “We’ve been very fortunate,” he said.

However some of the fields did get some water. “Tree branches came down and diverted water to the practice fields and playing fields.” Everything dried in time for Friday night’s opening football game against Warrior Run.

A new elementary principal started this year at Myers Elementary school. Mrs. Billie Jo Grohol was hired to take the place of former principal, Frank Jankowski. Skaluba said she was hired over the summer. He also reported that there will be an Act 34 hearing for the community soon and he hopes that the addition and renovation projects will start in the spring of 2019. The school year will end on May 31st and most of the inclement weather days have been built in the calendar according to Skaluba.

Montgomery Area School District faced difficulties with delays in construction of an addition to its Montgomery Area Atheltic and Community Center because of the heavy rain.

“Unfortunately, 20 or 30 inches of rain put us about three weeks behind,” said Dr. Daphne Bowers, Montgomery Area School District superintendent. “Construction got delayed, and the project will not be done on time.”

She said all the fall sports will be impacted with the delay in finishing up the project.

“It’s a slight inconvenience, but we’re dealing with it with the help of all the contractors working here,” she said. “We’re going to have a game Friday night. We have a home soccer game as well. All will go on.”

She said rain halted the construction.

“We put an addition on, so just laying blocks, getting concrete poured, getting the roof on was extremely difficult with the rain,” she said. “As of Friday night, we’ll be able to use the locker rooms, but basically, that’s it until we have final completion.”

As far as the school district’s other buildings, she said the water damage was minimal to small leaks.

“We were able to maintain our HVAC system through all the humidity. We basically have one building,” she said. “With that and several dehumidifiers, we’ve been okay. Just a couple replacements of a couple ceiling tiles.”

Michael Pawlik, superintendent of East Lycoming School District, said the district had some flood issues.

“In our high school, we did have some water in our boiler area,” he said. “In our area where we have our football area and wrestling room, on the lower level of the school, we had some issues.”

He said it had no impact on the start of school on Thursday.

“For safety reasons, for example, we’ll have to replace the wrestling mats and things like that,” he said. “There’s a storage area there, so storage items we might have to replace things in there It could have been a lot worse.”