Pipe bursts inside Gwinnett County school, forcing digital learning day

Bryan Mims
·2 min read

A Gwinnett County charter school closed for the day and went to digital learning after a pipe burst from the recent subfreezing temperatures.

The BIA Charter School in Norcross has 546 students in Kindergarten through eighth grade.

Neal Christian, the head of the school, told Channel 2′s Bryan Mims that staff members noticed a small stream of water running down the street Monday and called a plumber.

“We knew something was wrong, that water was coming out at that constant rate,” Christian said.

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The plumber wanted to make repairs to the underground PVC pipe immediately, but Christian said he needed to give families time to prepare for a digital learning day.

“We didn’t want to have to close school because we have 180 days to make sure our kids are properly prepared,” he said.

He decided to close Wednesday so the plumber could turn off the water and fix the pipe. The crack occurred in the pipe just off the school property.

“When it gets cold, like it was cold on previous days, the ground contracts and expands, causing some movement underground,” said Fadil Krantic of the Pink Plumber, who was in charge of repairing the line.

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The recent snap of cold days, as temperatures plummeted into the teens and 20s, has kept him busy fixing cracked pipes.

“Oh yeah, usually this time of year” he stays busy, he said. “And also in the springtime when the ground temperature changes.”

Christian said the COVID-19 pandemic provided good training for switching to digital learning.

“We learned a lot from the pandemic, and one thing we learned was this process of teaching via Zoom or Google Meets or Microsoft Teams – it works,” he said. “It’s not what we want to do, but it works in a case like this.”

The school resumes classes as usual on Thursday.

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