Arlee School to redo floor in new gym

By Melea Burke
Valley Journal
ARLEE — After a long wait, Arlee students have just three more weeks before they can hit the floor running in the school’s new gymnasium. School administration had high hopes that the court would be ready in time for volleyball season, but when the gym floor was completed it was obvious that more work was needed.
“There’s a lot of problems with (the floor),” Arlee Superintendent John Miller said.
The saga began about two months ago when Sirius Construction’s subcontractor, Big Sky Supplies, finished the floor. Architect Jay Kirby and Board Chairman Hank Adams were the first to notice the floor buckling in spots, Miller explained. At one point, the floor moved so much that the volleyball standards wouldn’t fit in their support holes, and boards fitted against a doorjamb had to be trimmed when they started to bend the metal.
The built-in pole vault pit isn’t flush with the floor, and several broken boards were installed where replacements should have been used.
Still, all these defects are barely noticeable to the layperson.
“If you didn’t know any better, it’s really beautiful,” Miller said.
But the bottom line, he explained, is that these cosmetic issues are signs of underlying structural problems that put kids’ safety at risk.

In the right light, the floor displays lots of “chatter,” or small ripples in the boards, which Miller said are the result of improper sanding. The contract called for the floor to be sanded north to south and east to west, he explained, but workers only sanded north to south. Running on an uneven floor like that could hurt kids’ legs, he noted.
And Miller said he spent an hour dribbling a basketball up and down the gym and found hundreds of “dead spots” where the ball stops bouncing.
“It’s just some real poor workmanship,” he said.
After voting unanimously three times to reject the floor, the board of trustees accepted a bid to replace the floor at a special meeting Monday night. Northern Hardwood Co, Inc., a Spokane-based company that built gym floors for the University of Montana, Montana Tech and Two Eagle River School in Pablo, will tear out the existing floor for $2,000, move the bleachers out to allow for removal and reinstallation of the floor for $2,000, and put in a new floor for $86,933, a total cost of about $15,000 more than the first floor.
“But it’s a lot better floor,” Miller said. “They’re giving us a good deal.”
Like the existing floor, the new one will be maple and will have the same artwork with red trim and a large “A” in the center of the court.
And Northern Hardwood plans to complete the job in just three weeks.
Miller said he’s heard “many” other schools have had similar problems with floors installed by Big Sky Supplies.
Although Arlee Schools will face litigation for withholding payment for the existing gym floor from general contractor Sirius Construction, Inc., Miller and the trustees felt keeping the existing floor would not be the best use of taxpayers’ money.
“We’re going to wind up in court for sure, but I think we have a really good case,” he said. “We want to do it right.”