On Sunday, Oct. 2, Fountain Hills High School staff noticed a water main break on campus by the cafeteria. Due to a lack of air conditioning in the building and clean water in the restrooms and water fountains, Fountain Hills High School will keep its doors closed to students all this week.

Students will be learning remotely from Monday, Oct. 3 to Friday, Oct. 7. According to Fountain Hills Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Cain Jagodzinski, there was no other way around the maintenance issue, and an outside vendor is coming to fix the water main this week.

Jagodzinski will do daily check ins with high school teachers via Google Meet, and students can work on classwork assigned through PLP, Google Classroom and/or Google Meet.

Jagodzinski is working with the Arizona Department of Education regarding instructional minutes and believes that Fountain Hills High School’s current emergency circumstances fall under the new Instruction Time Model Template. The state passed the template last year, authorizing school districts to adopt Instructional Time Models to provide flexibility in the method and manner in which students receive instructional hours.

The water main break also affected AC and clean water at the district office, but not the middle school or elementary school. Jagodzinski will set up a temporary office at the middle school, and athletic games this week have also been moved to the middle school. Practices are up to each coach for further details.

The water main pipe that broke was about 10 inches wide and 30 years old according to Jagodzinski. He said on Monday, Oct. 3, that it was too early to know the cost to fix the water main, but it will likely come from Maintenance and Operations (M&O).

FHUSD will continue to communicate with high school parents via email as new information becomes available. FHUSD will also be off for fall break next week, from Monday, Oct. 10, through Friday, Oct. 14.