After almost two full days of being closed due to health and safety concerns associated with overflowing toilets, Queen Elizabeth Public School reopened on Thursday with a final cause of the plumbing issue to be determined.
Joe Santa Maria, superintendent with the Algoma District School Board, told SooToday by phone on Thursday that the immediate issue leading to the overflowing toilets has been resolved and there was no damage to the school to speak of, other than clean up.
"This one was really kind of flukey. We haven't had that problem before," he said.
Santa Maria said the initial incident that led to the evacuation occurred at about noon on Tuesday. He said the overflow was not especially heavy, but it affected multiple bathrooms in the building.
"After that happened, we had public health considerations and wanted to sanitize and do what we needed to," he said.
Students and teachers were evacuated on Tuesday to the school's emergency site — the John Rhodes Community Centre — which is located immediately across the street. Parents and guardians were asked to pick up their children, said Santa Maria, while some who could not be picked up were bused home.
Although it looked to be fixed late on Tuesday, the problem reappeared, leading to an unexpected day off for students on Wednesday while contractors and board staff worked to fix the issue.
The school was reopened on Thursday.
Santa Maria said work is still being done to determine if the issue was due to plumbing on school property or city property.
"As of today, we don't have a final answer," said Santa Maria.
The Queen Elizabeth Public School building was built in 1946.
Santa Maria said there was a plan to build a new east end elementary school to replace some of the aging schools a few years ago, but a moratorium on school closures put in place in 2017 by the provincial government put a stop to that.