After a water main broke near the Quinn School, over 700 elementary schoolers temporarily became middle school students.

In the early morning hours of Friday, Jan. 10, a cast iron pipe cracked in an underground water line that entered the Quinn School, said Assistant Superintendent James Kiely. The break went undetected until around 8 a.m. when it was noticed that water was entering the boiler room. 

By 9:30 a.m., staff members had mobilized the students and prepared to bring them to Dartmouth Middle School.

“For the kids, it was probably a little bit exciting,” said Superintendent June Saba-Maguire. “They handled it really well.”

Students were brought to the middle school not because they were unsafe but because Quinn didn’t have any available water, Saba-Maguire said. This meant that the school didn’t have any plumbing and they weren’t able to prepare food.

“It would have impacted the operation of the school,” she said.

Kiely said factors that can contribute to a water main break include the pipe’s age and the weather.

The pipe that broke is “well below” the frost line, he added, which means it wasn’t directly impacted by the top layers of soil freezing, which can put pressure on the layers of soil beneath.

The Quinn School was built in 1967 and the water line has been underground since then, Kiely said, adding that the line’s age likely contributed to the break.

While it’s possible to prevent water main breaks by replacing the entire water service, this is a “very, very large job” and not something the district would do, Kiely said.

“We would just address these issues as needed,” he said. “The main fix would be that someday with newer buildings and new infrastructure, you would not have the likelihood of these problems.”

Dartmouth Public School staff, assisted by the town of Dartmouth and the Department of Public Works, worked together to repair the break. By 6 p.m. Friday, the pipe was fully repaired and ready for the return of students, faculty and staff on Monday, Jan. 13.

“When something unexpected happens, you really need the entire community to come together and just make sure things go as smoothly as possible for the students and the staff and the families,” Saba-Maguire said. “And I would say that that was accomplished.”