Lebanon -- Four months after its originally scheduled completion date, Lebanon Junior High School's expanded sprinkler system was finished on Wednesday night, just in time for an inspection by the fire department yesterday morning.

The system passed inspection and is now fully operational, said Lebanon Fire Inspector Duane Egner. “Everything checks out,” he said.

Delays in the system's completion surprised residents and at least some School Board members, who had been told by Lebanon School District administrators in January that the system was “installed.”

At a School Board meeting Wednesday, parent Janet Morgan blasted the district administration for allowing the building to remain open while the sprinkler system was incomplete. “All along, I thought it was taken care of,” she said.

The sprinkler system upgrade was mandated last year by fire officials and the State Board of Education to correct serious violations of fire safety codes, and was originally scheduled to be completed by December.

Before school started last fall, many other safety problems were corrected, such as more clearly marking upper-story windows that are supposed to serve as emergency exits and making the windows easier to open.

“Even though there are some safety issues that have been resolved, I still know that my son is in the third floor, back of the building most of the time, and if catastrophe happened, he can't fly,” Morgan said.

Parents picking up students from the junior kigh yesterday said they were happy that the system was finally in place.

Blanche Bagley, grandmother of a junior high student, said that she was relieved that the sprinklers had passed inspection. She said she hadn't been worried about the building's fire safety problems in recent months.

“I wasn't concerned because I just assumed that everything was taken care of,” she said.

In a Jan. 9 memorandum to the Lebanon School Board, Superintendent Michael Harris wrote that “we have installed the sprinkler system.” Official records of the Jan. 19 School Board meeting paraphrase Business Administrator James Fenn as reporting the system “has been completed;” a videotape of the meeting shows Fenn saying, “We put in the sprinkler system.”

In interviews this week, both officials acknowledged that the work dragged on considerably longer. It wasn't until Wednesday that the final work of connecting a section of the system to the alarm panel was completed.

Parents interviewed at the junior high yesterday had glowing opinions of the junior high regardless of controversy over conditions in the building and the district's failed efforts to win voter approval for a new school to replace it.

“What's been lost here is the fact that the teaching has been superlative,” said Lou Maresca, whose son is in eighth grade. He said he was chagrined over the way district officials dealt with delays in the sprinkler installation. “It's been a debacle. It really has; but the Upper Valley readership needs to know that the teaching is very, very good.”

“I think that the school is great. The teachers are incredible,” said Chris Schmidt of Grantham, whose daughter attends the junior high.

But he said, “I definitely think that they need a new building.”

Under the direction of Lebanon firefighters, workers from the John L. Carter Sprinkler Co. of Bow, N.H., ran through tests of the sprinkler system yesterday morning, checking water pressure in the pipes and alarms connected to the system.

Egner said contractors had added extensions to the building's existing sprinkler system progressively, working at night. He said that they turned off the water when they started work each night, and turned the system back on before leaving.

A section of the system that covers the building's attic had not been connected to the alarm panel until Wednesday night, according to Carter Sprinkler workers who had done the work.

Fire Inspector Jonathan Paul said that the tests done yesterday morning “went smoothly, for the most part.”

He noted two minor glitches that turned up in the inspection, but he said that the system was complete and working properly. An alarm switch did not reset after it was tripped during the test, and Paul said it would be replaced. He also said that the system could not be completely drained of water, because the drain in the building's basement wouldn't have been able to handle the flow.

“They may have to end up doing something different with that drain,” he said.

Paul sent a report of the fire department's inspection to the School District yesterday.

Martin Downs can be reached at mdowns@vnews.com or (603) 727-3210.