Storms Cause Acalanes Book Room to Flood

By Maya Agarwal and Olivia Foster, Staff Writers

// Bay Area’s atmospheric river storm brings heavy rainfalls to the Acalanes campus. Students study and keep warm in heated classrooms, oblivious to the water drenching the pages of their next English novels and stories.

Water began to enter the Acalanes book room on the morning of Thursday, Jan. 5. A stream developed and flowed from the back to the front of the campus. The two holes in the back of the book room allowed the stream to enter the area.

When Acalanes staff noticed the stream, they attempted to stop the flooding, but were unsuccessful.

“We thought because it was raining at the time, it wasn’t a real problem, and then when we saw it [Friday] morning, there was six to eight inches of standing water outside the door there. Finally, when they got it open, it was that way all the way across the whole room,” library media technician John Crain said.

Due to the room’s slanted floor, the water flow only damaged the books in the front of the room. The water affected books on the bottom four racks, and in total, destroyed 668 books.

“Some of them we don’t teach anymore, but many of them we do, and they’re popular books, and so we’re hoping we have insurance and so we can get them paid for,” Acalanes English teacher and English department head Erin Barth said.

Currently, the district does not have a definite plan of how they will resolve the issue, but Acalanes staff plan to reassess the situation at a dryer time.

“With the rain coming in next week, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’ve taken all the books off the bottom shelves, so it won’t happen again,” Crain said.

The next steps in re-obtaining books for the Acalanes curriculum include meetings between the Acalanes Union High School District (AUHSD) office and the budget office to find a way to fund the process.

“The school district remains committed to ensuring that every student at all of our schools has all of the necessary instructional materials they need. If that requires ordering some replacements, then we would facilitate that,” AUHSD Associate Superintendent John Walker said.