Clairton Education Center reopening held

By Matt Petras

For the MVI

After closing like other districts around the country at the start of the pandemic, Clairton School District brought its elementary students back full-time in the fall of 2020. 

It was going well, according to Superintendent Dr. Ginny Hunt, until a water line burst toward the end of September and flooded the bottom floor of the building, which houses its elementary students and the boiler room. 

“It was a true disaster,” Hunt said. 

The district held a grand reopening for the building, the Clairton Education Center, on Wednesday, inviting the community for a celebration and showing off a fixed and renovated school. 

Insurance financed repairs to the elementary floor, and it was starting to look great, Hunt said, adding that the elementary floor popped with more color and received a much-needed new gym. 

The rest of the building received a facelift when volunteers from U.S. Steel took to the school, repainting and otherwise sprucing it up. 

“It was amazing. I’ve never seen so many people come,” Hunt said. “Their corporate office came. Their laborers came. Every day, there were people all through the middle/high school volunteering their time, so when our middle/high school students came back this year, they wouldn’t have to come back to a very drab, old looking building.” 

It took a long time to recover from the effects of the flooding, which devastated the bottom floor last year. 

“So much had to be discarded,” Hunt said. “It was like rebuilding the whole elementary level from the ground up.”

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