Plantation Key School holds up for Irma

The under-construction Plantation Key School for students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade suffered no real damage during Hurricane Irma and is only slightly behind schedule, Monroe County School District Superintendent Mark Porter said Friday.

“I was pretty impressed,” Porter said of the PKS walls holding up during the Category 4 storm that struck two months ago. “No significant issues at all associated with the hurricane.”

The new $34 million school, replacing an old building, is set to open in August 2018. School Board members will tour the construction site Tuesday afternoon before their 3 p.m. organizational meeting at Coral Shores High School in Tavernier, which will be followed by a 3:30 p.m. workshop and a 5 p.m. meeting.

Also Tuesday, the board will discuss Porter’s task force created to help define a proposal to build employee housing behind Sugarloaf School in the Lower Keys.

The six members include builder Niels Hubbell, United Teachers of Monroe President Holly Hummell-Gorman, Porter, Jenny O’Brien, Rachel Quad and Kimberly Matthews.

This story was originally published November 10, 2017 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Plantation Key School holds up for Irma."