They had nibbled away at the front entrance and dug up PCB tainted soil around the foundation, but last week heavy equipment ripped into the middle school itself.

With the elementary school closed for vacation next door, the Christmas break offered a traffic-free opportunity to get a bit of the heaviest, noisiest work out of the way. There will be much more of that to come, however.

Work began in earnest off Old County Road on December 26, the day after Christmas and continued through week’s end.

It’s a bit later than had been hoped. Before actual demolition could begin, crews first had to deal with the PCBs that were the primary reason behind the decision to close the middle school and build a new grade 5-12 school roughly in its place.

While they were carefully removing everything that PCBs were known to inhabit —ceiling and floor tiles, window frames and more — and shipping them off to a secure landfill, they found yet another toxin.

This one, 2-methylnapthalene, proved to be in isolated locations in minor amounts and is expected to generate an added bill of around $20,000 (money that has already been appropriated).

Offsetting that expense, however, is the fact that well drillers found sufficient good quality water at shallower depths than had been feared which has proven to be a money saver.

There is much more demolition to go on the huge structure and all of that debris must be trucked away. That truck traffic is being scheduled and routed to minimize impact on morning and afternoon arrival and dismissal times at the elementary school next door.

The School Building Committee now predicts that the demolition phase will last until sometime in early March.

The yet-to-be-selected general contractor will begin setup in April and construction should start in May on the $97-plus million job.

Students should be able to move into their new school in 2021.