Joseph Arthur Middle School is undergoing a multi-million dollar project to remediate and prevent future damage caused by the former coal mine that sits beneath it.
Subsidence — what experts call mines shifting over time — has caused cracks in floors and both exterior and interior walls, which have gradually worsened with over the years. In one 18 month span, the floor dropped 9 inches on the north end of the school, O’Fallon Central School District 104 Superintendent Gabrielle Rodriguez said.
“It was sickening to go in every day and watch these cracks widen,” Rodriguez said. “We had actual walls separating.”
The school sits on St. Ellen Mine Road and is adjacent to St. Ellen Mine Park, which was the site of the mine opening. It opened in 2008; voters approved a bond issue to build the school back in 2005.
Rodriguez said the district was given the option to fill the mine with concrete, a process called “grouting,” for $2 million before it built the school.
Rodriguez, who became superintendent in 2023, speculated the board elected to not grout the mine before construction because of the cost. Now, grouting and repairing damage is projected to cost at least $4 million, she said.
So far, the district has completed repairs to address immediate liability concerns, such as cracks in the floors. Insurance covered these costs, Rodriguez said. A federal Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Grant will cover the grouting. She expects to know the final cost of the grouting in December. The insurance company will also cover the cost of remaining cracks.
This summer, Howard Concrete Pumping is grouting the portion of the mine that’s impacting the front of the school and expects to be done before school’s start. The back half will be done by December, and clean up will be done by June 2026, Rodriguez said.
Students will be able to return to their normal classrooms and activities in August, but the back portion of the school, including the district’s athletic fields, are not usable during the project’s duration. Rodriguez said the district will use the city’s athletic facilities in the meantime, and will bus students to those fields.
Anyone trespassing and visiting the site is threatening the ability to get the project done safely and on time, Rodriguez said. Law enforcement will be contacted, if necessary, Rodriguez said.
“Howard Concrete is working six days a week, 12 hours a day to try and get it filled so that we can start school,” Rodriguez said.
The middle school's mine subsidence issues date back over a decade
The district got its first evidence that the building was sinking into the mine in 2013 with a crack in a hallway floor. After it grew, SCI Engineering assessed the damage, determined there was no safety concern and said it would continue to monitor the site, according to previous Belleville News-Democrat reporting.
For awhile, there wasn’t any movement, former Superintendent Dawn Elser previously told the BND.
By the time Rodriguez came to the district in 2023, windows were popping out, the floor continued dropping and chairs were getting stuck in floor cracks, she said. Rodriguez said she felt it was only a matter of time before somebody got hurt.
Insurance was able to help with flooring fixes, Rodriguez said. She also reached out to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and was told they’d continue to monitor the situation.
“I felt like it was a ‘wait-and-see’ thing, and I can’t operate like that,” Rodriguez said. “It was too much of a concern for student safety.”
Rodriguez said she feared the situation would be a repeat of what happened at Wolf Branch Middle School in Swansea. In 2017, movement in the abandoned mine beneath the school made the ground drop nearly 25 inches and forced evacuation, a news release from the Illinois Department of National Resources says. The school reopened with a partial rebuild and renovations in 2021.
To prevent a similar fate, Rodriguez contacted local lawmakers to urge action. She said U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, both Democrats from Springfield, helped the district to secure the Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Grant from the federal government’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement.
Wolf Branch Middle School and James Arthur Middle School aren’t the only Metro East schools that have been impacted by mine subsidence; Belle Valley and Collinsville are two other examples. Old mines have also been responsible for damage to local homes, neighborhoods, roads and even a grocery store closure.
Editor's note: This story was originally published by the Belleville News-Democrat. Madison Lammert is a reporter for the BND, a news partner of St. Louis Public Radio.
