EC deals with unexpected challenges from surprise flood

Earlier this year, six East Campus rooms were impacted by a water leakage, resulting in damages to the classroom’s flooring as well as some of the tiling. This caused the classrooms to be unusable for a few weeks, prompting a five-week-long process of renovations and repairs to fix the damages present.
“It happened on a Monday at around 3:30 AM to 4:30 AM,” EC Principal Dr. Sean Potts said. “On January 15th, East Campus rooms E160, E169, E170, E171, E172, and E236 experienced a water leakage caused by the extreme cold temperatures we were experiencing at the time.”
Dr. Potts explained that one of the building’s heating units experienced something known as a “freeze up,” which is when sub-zero winds from cold temperatures make their way into the heating coils, thus creating pressure, causing them to swell up and eventually burst.
Shortly four hours after the incident, Lake Park’s building manager, Mr. Larry Buccieri, and his maintenance teams were able to extract the water from the carpet in all six rooms, additionally placing dehumidifiers in each room to extract the remaining moisture.
“Once we had that taken care of, we had to work on replacing the flooring and making other repairs to each room,” Dr. Potts said. “That process took a little bit longer due to the time it took to have certain materials shipped to the school.”
Besides the efforts put in by the maintenance teams, many others played a huge role in the recovery process.
EC Assistant Principal Ms. Pia Laudadio worked closely with the teachers and their department leaders to identify alternative classrooms for everyone to relocate to while rooms were being repaired.
“The process of transitioning to the driver’s education classroom was easy and smooth thanks to the efforts of our assistant principal, Mrs. Laudadio,” PE teacher Mr. David Haberman said.
“We used rooms all across East Campus for teachers and students. Everyone was super accommodating; it was a true team effort,” Dr. Potts said. “
I am really impressed with the flexibility, patience, and understanding displayed by the teachers and students who were impacted and had to switch classrooms. They were great – and so understanding!”
Mr. Haberman described his experiences dealing with the classroom change and how he adapted and adjusted to the new classroom environment. “I learned about the news from my Danielson leader, Mr. Ben Hussey. He informed me that there was damage that occurred in my classroom, which would render the room unusable for some time.”
In the beginning, some students forgot to go to the new classroom or struggled to find the room, but through the use of Google Classroom postings, emails, and word of mouth, students were able to find the new space with very little disruption,” Mr. Haberman said.
Ultimately, it took 5 weeks to complete the necessary renovations, with students returning to their classrooms on the week of February 20th. In addition to the new carpet in all six rooms, the heating and cooling units will receive new coils and computer controllers.
The school also plans to replace some of the tiling in the World Language hallways that was damaged by the water as well, much of which will be starting over spring break.