Fire investigators called the Friday night blaze suspicious and haven't determined the cause or set a damage amount. Arson or not, it won't stop school from starting on time.
''School will resume Monday as planned,'' Principal Holly Coombs said. ''Well, maybe not as planned, but school will resume on Monday.''
All that was left in teacher Michelle Davis' fifth-grade homeroom was charred and melted - from the bulletin boards to new name tags on the desks. A television and an overhead projector looked as if they had been zapped in a microwave.
A nearby library and next-door classrooms with computers were spared. Mrs. Davis hadn't yet seen her preparation gone up in smoke. The principal tried to reach her Saturday with the bad news.
Mrs. Davis' former students rode bikes to the scene Saturday morning and wondered what would become of her Wildlife Club.
''She was the best science teacher I ever had,'' said Andrew Vadnais, 12, now a sixth-grader at White Oak. He and a few other boys peered in a broken window to see their blackened old classroom.
Mr. Lincoln the iguana didn't survive the fire. The blaze started near his cage. The toads didn't escape either. But Colerain Township Fire Investigator Ron Stemen found a fish and a snake alive.
He and other firefighters will continue to examine the damage today. If it was caused by arson, Ann Weigel Elementary will join a growing number of schools that have been torched.
Last month, four boys between the ages of 7 and 10 admitted setting a fire that caused extensive smoke damage to the Winton Montessori School. In June, a fire that gutted a classroom at North College Hill High School was deliberately set, authorities said, as was a fire that month in a second-grade classroom at Oakdale Elementary in the Oak Hills district. And last year, the School for Creative and Performing Arts in Over-the-Rhine had to rebuild an auditorium destroyed by arson.
