Aide, Student Fall Down Shaft Beside Elevator

A Kellogg High School teaching assistant was in a hospital Wednesday night with a broken shoulder and ribs after she and a student fell into a floor opening Wednesday morning.

Sharon Bartle, a special-education teaching assistant, was helping a 19-year-old wheelchair-bound student out of a school elevator around 10 a.m. when she slipped into a service opening just outside the elevator doors, said Superintendent Greg Godwin.

A school district maintenance worker apparently had left the cover to the service shaft open by mistake.

The opening gives maintenance crews access to the elevator’s controls.

Bartle and the student fell about 8 feet.

The student was taken to Shoshone Medical Center and received stitches to her head. She later was released.

Bartle was being kept overnight and could be released today, Godwin said.

Bartle was wheeling the student out of the elevator backwards and didn’t see the hole until it was too late, Godwin said.

The school district is investigating why the service cover had been left open.