Snow Load & Cornice Concerns

We’d like to assure all of our students, families, and staff that the TTUSD maintenance and facilities team is regularly monitoring snow loads for all of our facilities to ensure a safe learning environment. With the substantial snow over the last few weeks, our team has diligently assessed snow loads to ensure we are within the building code requirements and can provide a safe environment for our students and staff.

To clarify, the issues we found with snow load earlier this week were detected by our team’s attentive work and were found on some of the older portions of two schools, Truckee Elementary, and Truckee High School.

Immediately, our maintenance team, in partnership with outside contractors, began working tirelessly to reduce snow from those schools’ roofs. We were excited to welcome our elementary students back after being closed for one day and our high school students after being closed for two days. It was a true team effort in these unprecedented times.

With the incoming weather, we will continue to monitor all of our facilities proactively. To do that, we utilize a measuring tool to record the depth and weight and then use that data to determine the snow weight on the roof. Our facilities and maintenance teams are prepared to monitor all of our buildings during and after this weather event to ensure we only bring students into buildings when it’s safe.

Additionally, our facilities team will continue to clear roofs and cornices that are safe to access. For those that are inaccessible, we are exploring and implementing various other solutions, such as installing plywood on windows.

We understand your expressed concerns and want to assure you we are aware and listening. We are actively working to remedy any situations arising from the recent snow storms as quickly as possible. Safety will remain at the forefront of our actions and decisions.