The owner of the Gainesville Primrose School says they've been able to continue classes with close to normal operations despite a car crashing into one of the classrooms early Saturday morning.
"About 2:30 in the morning we got a call from our alarm company that the fire alarm and the burglar alarm both went off at the same time, and that's not good," Owner John McKnight said Monday.
Jeremiah Mitchell, age 38 of Gainesville, was arrested on DUI charges after Gainesville police said he failed to turn while driving down Sandridge Court, jumped a curb, hit a flagpole and crashed into the preschool building around 2:30 a.m.
"He went airborne and came down in our building, in the corner of the building right through a double-pane window and a brick wall and landed inside our infant classroom," McKnight said. "The vehicle was completely in the classroom, so it destroyed quite a bit of equipment in there."
McKnight said the school's contractor was able to get a team to the building that day and do preliminary clean-up work, including boarding up the hole in the front of the structure. School officials then began the process of preparing for Monday classes.
He said it was initially unclear whether the school would be open Monday.
"My wife and our leadership team managed to re-assign the children from that classroom to other classrooms and move some equipment around, so we were able to open (Monday) morning without skipping a beat," McKnight said.
Primrose School is open year-round and McKnight said they will continue operations while repairs are being made. He said once the work begins he expects it to last around a month.
The driver was not injured in Saturday's crash and no one was in the school building at the time.
