GARDEN CITY — Garden City School has been condemned, and officials are scrambling to determine what comes next with the fall semester starting in less than a week.

Summer Crawford attended Garden City School as a child and was excited to have her five-year-old son Carson start his first school year at her alma mater next week. Thankfully, Carson will still get to attend Garden City — but he’ll likely be having class in a portable trailer as opposed to the nearly century-old school house.

As of Wednesday, the Garden City School main building has been deemed a “life-threatening area” by engineers. The school system’s maintenance staff discovered the foundation is sinking and crumbling, and officials are now working to make alternate arrangements to move classes to a still-useable back building and portable trailers.

“This school is a big deal and it really is the heart of the community,” Crawford said. “It’s like it has just been here forever.”

Almost 100 parents, teachers and students packed into Garden City First Baptist Church for a community meeting Wednesday, making use of the sanctuary because the school facilities were unusable.

Though the board is still working out the details of exactly what the 2014 school year will look like, principal Susan Melton pledged the school — albeit not the building — would remain open and functional for the year.

“I can’t promise anything about what’ll happen with the school, with the building or with anything, but I promise we’ll take care of those babies and make sure instruction is what it needs to be,” she said, holding back tears. “You’ll see the same results at the end of the year, just as if we were not here talking about this problem … We’re working on a plan, where to drop off your child, where to pick them up. We’re putting resources and time into it right now to come up with the safest and most expedient method.”

“This is devastating for us, the good news is we’re working to correct it,” Melton added.

Cullman County Schools Superintendent Dr. Craig Ross explained the structural problems were discovered by maintenance staff, then confirmed by a professional engineer. Moving forward, the board will work to fully diagnose the extent of the damage and develop a plan to make repairs. Ross said that process should take 6-8 weeks, at which point they’ll hopefully have a plan and more detailed timeline in place.

As the process moves forward, Ross said he will make all information and reports available to the community in an effort to be as transparent as possible about the process.

“That building is not safe and I’m not going to put a child in that building, or an adult in that building. But, I’m not here to close a school. I’m here to close a building. Temporarily,” he said to applause from the crowd. “Our maintenance staff has been monitoring the building as one that will need some attention, but it was a very wet spring and there has been extensive damage to the foundation of this building. The pillars that hold the building up are sinking, cracking and disintegrating. My litmus test has always been ‘Are you making decisions that’ll be best for kids?’ If I can answer that question, if I hold that litmus test to it and can say yes, then I’m able to sleep good at night.”

Some attendees in the crowd were relieved to hear there are plans to reopen the campus and not just shutter the school, with at least one person noting the “grapevine can be dangerous.”

Ross said they had originally considered moving some classes to nearby Hanceville Elementary School, the main campus Garden City feeds students into, but Melton and her staff fought to ensure no students would be transferred due to the problems.

“Ms. Melton dug in her heels and said no students are leaving here, none of the family is leaving here, so we’ve let them decide what is best,” he said to cheers. “We plan to use all available classes that are not a part of the main building and portables.”

Though she has only lived in Garden City since 1999, New York transplant Rebecca Frasier said she has quickly learned what the small community school means to the town of Garden City. Both of her children attended, and Frasier joked she’s gone from a small-school skeptic to full-fledged member of the parent teacher organization in just a decade.

“Being an outsider, I wasn’t sure about the smaller schools,” she said. “But, our first year here wiped all that away, every bit of doubt. It’s like a public school with a private school education.”

Mary Seibert is a lifelong resident of Garden City, and attended the school before her own children and grandchildren called it home. To this day she remains a volunteer and substitute. Though she’s saddened to see the doors close, Seibert said she is confident the problems will be temporary and it will reopen.

“This is the community here, and we wouldn’t have a community if not for the school,” she said. “It’d be devastating if it didn’t reopen, but we’re thankful the new superintendent is working with us to make sure it’ll still be here.”