After massive flooding, Murphy Elementary in Round Lake to open Monday

Murphy and Ellis elementary schools in the Round Lake area will welcome students to class Monday, about a month after floodwater caused $3 million in damage to the buildings.

"We've all been working weekends, there have been working vacations and late night meetings," said Ana Fuhrer, the assistant superintendent of elementary teaching and learning for Round Lake Area Unit District 116. "Whatever it takes to get it done."

And, there was a lot to do. The July storms left 4 feet of standing water at Murphy in the library, gym, music room and fourth-grade classrooms and about one foot of water at Ellis in the library, gym, cafeteria, a few classrooms and some office space.

By the time Gov. Bruce Rauner arrived to survey the damage at Murphy a week after the storms, the water had been vacuumed away but a pungent, oily mildew smell hung in the air and there was gray grime on nearly every surface.

Since then, there's been a lot of industrial-strength dehumidifying and deep cleaning. Flood-damaged furniture, flooring and lockers have been removed and, according to recent tests, there's no trace of mold or mildew in the air at either school.

Ellis in Round Lake will be without its gym for the first few weeks of the school year but everything else will be ready Monday.

While the lower level at Murphy in Round Lake Park has greatly improved, it's not yet ready for students.

It will be without a gym and library until late October or early November, according to Fuhrer.

But every student will have a classroom to start the new school year. A temporary mobile building assembled behind Murphy will house all fourth grade classrooms and the music room until the lower level rooms are ready. No completion date has been set.

Jennifer Arroyo, Murphy's assistant principal, said Wednesday was the first day fourth grade teachers could see their mobile classrooms.

"They were excited to get going," Arroyo said Friday in teacher Kathy Williams' classroom, which was decorated in two days this week.

Arroyo said the school's theme this year is "turning lemons into lemonade." She said officials handed out lemons to all the teachers when they returned to school this week.

Perhaps the best example of that is Murphy's library. Instead of rehabbing the library, it will be rebuilt into a 21st-century learning space. The wall separating the traditional library and adjacent computer room will come down and the larger combined space will be designed promote collaborative learning.

"It is the first thing you see when you walk in the front door - the library is the heart of this school," Fuhrer said. "It's just a devastating situation, but from devastation there has come a wonderful opportunity for students."

In addition, a massive community book drive collected at least 100,000 books to replace the flood-damaged library books.