Campus Delay Opening Explained

By now, Trinity parents should have received this notice from Dr. Littlejohn explaining that school will meet off site for the first week:

Dear Trinity Families,

I want to thank you for your patience as we await the completion of our new campus on Baileywick Road. It has been very exciting to watch as "nothing" has become a school.

Last Friday, around 5:30 pm, an unexpected glitch in the construction progress made it clear to me for the first time that we were not likely to have everything in place in time for the Inspections Division to grant us occupancy for this Friday, September 9. Despite truly valiant efforts on Chris Evans' part and on the part of numerous subcontractors, many of our school staff and many parent volunteers, the present delays are simply beyond our control. I believe at this point that we need to begin school at an alternate location and remain there for one week. It is our best judgment that after one week, all four of our buildings will be inspected and ready for occupancy. See our blog at trinityrising.blogspot.com for more details.

Three churches have graciously offered their facilities as a short-term solution to this challenge. We are most grateful to Christ Baptist Church, Crossroads Fellowship and Providence Baptist Church for their kind hospitality. However, each of these possibilities has certain limitations. Rather than belabor these, let me tell you that after 36 hours of learning and weighing the possibilities and limitations, I want you to know what I know.

We will begin school at our new times (8:00, upper; 8:15, lower) on Monday, September 12. The lower school will meet at Providence Baptist Church and carpool and room arrangements will be very much as they have been in years past, with classes meeting on the first floor. We are waiting to hear if the upper school can also meet at Providence, using the third floor for the week, but we have confirmed the use of the very nice facilities at Crossroads Fellowship should Providence not be available.

This Thursday's parent meetings at Providence will be held on schedule as will the all-school picnic/barbeque on Friday. However, the K-6 Meet the Teacher scheduled from 11 am to noon on Thursday at the Baileywick campus is being cancelled. More information will be available at both of these events and I look forward to seeing you both nights.

Again, I appreciate your patience. These changes are not what any of us would have chosen, but we have much to be thankful for and I am encouraged, as I have said before, that God is not surprised by any of these events. I am confident that with just a little more patience, we are in store for a very exciting school year.

Sincerely yours,
Robert Littlejohn, Ph.D.
Head of School
Trinity Academy of Raleigh

The decision to move off campus was the result of a couple factors related to our water service. The first is that on Thursday I was told by our contractor, Mammoth, that it would be late the following week (9/15) before they would have all the water line operable. They have laid over a half mile of pipe down Baileywick road and have now connected it, but it will take a day to pressure test and get the air out of the system, and then another couple days to sanitize the line. Since they are not finished with the on-site lines that connect the water from the street to our buildings, we will have to spend another 2 days sanitizing those lines too.

When we pressed them on the urgency of our situation, they agreed to put additional men on the job and to work over the Labor Day holiday. Unfortunately, our close call when connecting the water line meant we could make no progress on the off-site water over the holiday weekend. A further setback occurredured Friday afternoon when we realized we couldn't pinpoint the location of a buried power line well enough to safely bury our water lines until a service could mark its location this afternoon. This meant that no work on our water could be done this weekend.

At this point, the only thing I know of that would keep campus from opening is the lack of water (and fire regulations block any creative solutions we considered). Friday, we should have all other inspections completed, as well as sidewalks, paved parking, decking, and other infrastructure. By deciding to meet off-site for a week, we believe it is possible to have all four buildings ready by the time we open the campus for school, which should make classes run more smoothly and make it easier on our faculty and staff.

When we started construction a month ago, there were about 100 things that had to go right for us to meet this goal. About 98 of them did, and I feel much of that had to do with the faithful prayers of our community. Thanks for everyone for their encouragement and support. Finally, thank you for your patience. We'll be home soon!