Burst Pipe at Wheaton High School Closes Gym

It appears that the Wheaton High School modernization project can't come soon enough.  On March 28th, the main gym and several classrooms in the lower section of Wheaton HS were flooded after a pipe burst in the equipment closet. The damage to the gym floor will take several weeks to fix.  What this will mean for the Wheaton Boys Volleyball and Co-Ed Volleyball teams is no home contests and playing exclusively at the opponents sites for the month of April at least.  A large framed structure and tarp currently occupy the gym floor as repairs proceed.

The school was built in 1954 and had a face lift in 1983.  Wheaton shares space with the Thomas Edison High School of Technology.  The flood is the latest of several facility issues the aging school has been plagued with in the last several years.  The beginning of the 2012-2013 school year the schools air handlers quit, but unfortunately the 90 degree weather had not.  For the first couple weeks the Fall Girls Varsity and Junior Varsity Volleyball  teams had to play matches and practice in stifling heat with little air movement except for portable fans that had to be brought in to provide some relief.  Last year a small sink hole opened up in front of the school entrance in the main driveway.  The hole was repaired and later re-repaired. 

Wheaton High School has been slated for modernization for years but had been postponed repeatedly.  The school was threatened with it again in 2011 when Montgomery County School Superintendent Joshua Starr submitted a budget delaying the project.  However both the Board of Education and County Council overruled the delay and gave the green light to move forward with the modernization.  The groundbreaking for the new school is expected this summer on the school stadium.  Building the new school on the stadium site will allow students at both Wheaton and Edison to continue using their existing facilities during construction until the new buildings are complete. The new Wheaton High School is expected to be ready by 2015.  The new stadium, baseball and softball fields will come later.  Wheaton is the last of the five Down County Consortium schools to be modernized.