Workers build a ramp outside Lincoln High School Saturday afternoon, after a teacher's aide crashed into the north entrance nearby, Friday. Police tape cordons off the area, in foreground. Workers are cleaning up the area this weekend, so that school may reopen Monday. Call Photo/Ernest A. Brown

By AARON D. FRECHETTE

LINCOLN — Classes are expected to resume at the normal time Monday morning at Lincoln High School. But it will be anything but a normal day at school as the community copes with feelings of grief, fear and sadness.
Those feelings, of course, stem from the circumstances involving the tragic death of a teacher’s aide, who — armed with an accelerant — plowed his car into the school’s north entrance about an hour after classes had been dismissed Friday. 

Smoke and soot cleanup began Friday evening,  Schools Superintendent Georgia Fortunato said. School staff and restoration crews mobilized by the Interlocal Trust Insurance Company worked throughout the day and night on Saturday — and are expected to continue their clean-up work throughout the day  today as well as overnight.
The superintendent said she planned to remain on-site throughout the weekend to supervise restoration work.
A structural engineer, the town’s building inspector and the district’s director of building and grounds all deemed the building structurally sound, Fortunato announced Saturday afternoon. While the building should be largely repaired by Monday morning, the emotional healing process for Lincoln High School staff and students has only just begun.
Perhaps addressing the fears of students, staff and parents who realize that this tragedy could have been much worse had it occurred just an hour earlier, the superintendent released a timeline of the school district’s response to the incident.
“Our schools are safe and both students and staff are our number one priority,” Fortunato said on Saturday.
Fortunato praised the “quick and decisive efforts” of Principal Kevin McNamara, Assistant Principal Marc Cobb and Administrative Liaison Charlotte Tavares, whom she credited with following established protocols and ensuring “that no student or staff member was placed in harm’s way.”
The superintendent said that she convened the school district’s crisis intervention team on Friday “to provide help and counsel for those students and staff members on the scene.”
On Monday, the team, consisting of all school district psychologists, counselors, social workers and counselors from Northern Rhode Island Community Mental Health, will be mobilized to provide counseling for students and staff impacted by the tragedy.
School Committee Vice-Chair Elizabeth Robson convened a special emergency session of the Lincoln School Committee, where Fortuanto briefed the committee about the response to the incident.
“While we never plant to be in this set of circumstances, we feel very fortunate that Mrs. Forutanto was able to act to quickly to contain the effects of this incident,” Robson stated in a press release.
Fortuanto, School Committee Chairwoman Mary Ann Roll and members of the school committee said they would be at the school on Monday “to lend additional support to the Lincoln High School community.”
“The business of teaching and learning in the classrooms will continue in Lincoln High School” on Monday, Forutnato said.