PORT NECHES, Texas — The Port Neches-Groves Independent School District is facing a setback. The campuses that were supposed to open this fall likely won't be ready for the start of the school year.
This week administrators found out the new campuses likely won't be ready until 2023.
It's been 70 years since they built a new school. So, this is something they're looking forward to and the last thing they expected was a setback.
As soon as voters passed a $130 million bond in 2019, PNG administrators got to work, designing two new intermediate schools.
“So you know, in the school business, when we have a deadline, that's what we work for,” said Julie Gauthier, deputy superintendent for the district.
This week, the district received word about a construction delay, pushing the original deadline of August of this year to August of 2023.
“We were disappointed to learn at the meeting that our contractor, Cadence McShane, let us know that they would not be making the deadline in order to have the August move-in date,” Gauthier said.
The district is taking the current seven schools and consolidating them into four new schools: Two Pre-K 2 campuses and two third through fifth grade campuses.
Gauthier said they did everything on their part to make sure a delay wouldn't happen.
“We've paid the bills on time if they, we didn't change anything with the facilities,” Gauthier said. “There were no change orders, nothing on our end where we change the design or anything that would have caused them to have the delay.”
The district was informed the delay is due to not receiving structural steel.
We reached out to Cadence Mcshane Construction Company for comment but we haven't heard back from them yet.
Gauthier said despite the pushback, she knows it'll be worth the wait.
“Yes, but we only let ourselves be disappointed for a few hours and then we get up and move on in the other direction because we don't have time to sit around and pout about it. And we know that we're going to have great schools in the end,” Gauthier said.
Gauthier said if campuses are fully built in the middle of the next school year, the district will not move students and teachers until the following school year.