On Sept. 30, there was a bathroom flood on the second floor which caused considerable damages to the new bathrooms and classes below.

“We had a toilet that was malfunctioning in terms of continuously running, and then someone decided that it would be cute to stuff paper towels and toilet paper down into that and it clogged,” principal Brian Brennan said. “Because it was continuously running, it just started to overflow since there was nothing to shut it off.”

The flooding made it all the way to English teacher Jennifer Fruwirth’s room, where it traveled to the front wall, down into the PLL room and below into the brand new bathroom spaces. The worst of the damages resided in Fruwirth’s room.

“The carpet that’s in her room got ruined. She had a pair of shoes get ruined. There were a couple other things in there that got ruined. The water poured across, because there’s kind of a slope to it, and as the water continued to flow out of that room, it got pushed to the front wall,” Brennan said.
The students in her room had no choice but to evacuate the classroom, ending class early. The two to three inches of water in her classroom soaked everything in contact with the floor.

“It was quite jolting. Literally three minutes before the bell, my kids and I moved to the door, and I got within like three feet of the door and my foot stepped in the water and we were like, ‘What is happening?’ Like it doesn’t make sense at all,” Fruwirth said.

The flooding created a substantial amount of water that caused many teachers and students to find a different route to exit the building.

“I looked down and there was a current, like looking at a river, coming under the door… When the 2:10 bell rang, I had to help Mr. Wegener tell kids to ‘Stop, go that way. Stop, go that way.’ And there’s been water out there before, but it has never made it to my room…I came back in and the water was all the way to the back wall. Mr. Wegener told me that because there’s an air conditioning vent there, it was running out the front of the building, and I also saw it running down the steps like a waterfall to the first floor,” Fruwirth said.

The initial plumbing problem in the restroom was minor and could have been resolved, but because of the sheer volume of water, it turned into thousands of dollars of damage all due to vandalism by an undisclosed number of students. Though the names of the student or students involved were not made public due to legal reasons, there were disciplinary actions taken, though the specifics were also not disclosed.

“There were consequences applied. Let’s put it that way,” Brennan said.

The water that gushed from the toilet caused much damage, but it has all been cleaned up and the bathrooms will eventually reopen in hopes of this being the last incident of this nature.

“I mean, take care of what we have, you know?” Brennan said. “The water was pouring through the ceiling tiles like it was raining in the hallways…which was the most disappointing to me. We spent a lot of money to try to do something nice, and that turns around and gets damaged that quickly.”