At a Magnolia ISD Board of Trustees meeting on Monday, Jan. 9, Executive Director of Facilities Tim Bruner provided board members with an update on construction happening at various campuses within the district. Here are three things to note from Monday's meeting.

1. The five classrooms damaged by a Dec. 28 fire at Bear Branch Junior High School—including the classroom in which the fire started—are expected to reopen by Friday, Jan. 13, said Tim Bruner, executive director of facilities at MISD. 

"[Classroom D207] was pretty much destroyed," he said. "But the classrooms on either side, other than the smoke and water damage, were basically unharmed."

The early morning fire started in room D207, an upstairs math classroom.

"The building system [and] the fire alarm system did its job," Bruner said. "The fire was contained to the single classroom. There was a lot of water and smoke damage that we dealt with, but the building systems did their job."

Blackmon Mooring, a cleaning service that specializes in fire and water damage cleanup, and other vendors worked with MISD to clean up the school. Bruner said Blackmon Mooring contributed about 10,000 man hours in seven days to clean up Bear Branch Junior High to prepare it for students' return on Jan. 4.

"If you were to walk into our school today, you would not have realized that there was a fire in a corner of our building," said Ben King, principal of Bear Branch Junior High School.

2. The two new intermediate schools, Bear Branch Intermediate and Magnolia Intermediate, are starting to take shape. Bruner said the steel frame for Bear Branch Intermediate is scheduled to be erected next week. Masonry work will also begin next week on Magnolia Intermediate, as the steel has already been built.

3. The District Conference Center will go out for a competitive sealed proposal in February or March. When built, the facility will accommodate about 1,000 guests for meetings or banquets. The conference center is set to be located next to Magnolia Parkway Elementary on FM 1488.