Children’s Center Floods Overnight

Eleven PEA families woke up Wednesday morning to a call from Amy Farnham, the Director of Enrollment at the Harris Family Children’s Center, conveying unpleasant news: the toddler room and part of the infant room at the Center flooded during the nighttime, and those programs would need to be canceled for the day.The decision to close the Center’s toddler program, Farnham said, was prompted after consultation with Facilities Management.“I contacted all the parents before 8 am, so they could make alternative child care arrangements,” she said.The source of the flood was a malfunctioning faucet, which at some point on Tuesday night turned on and ran the entire night to flood the two adjacent rooms. Although damages to the floor were less invasive, due to a floor that is half covered in rubber, almost all of the furniture in the rooms, which was wooden, soaked up large amounts of water and was severely damaged as a result.According to Farnham, the damages done to facility will take different amounts of time to repair, but the Center will be resuming its toddler program Thursday.The Center offers care services for the offspring of the Academy’s faculty and staff, and members of the surrounding community. The areas affected by the flood, the infant and toddler rooms, were two of the five programs the center offers, with the other three being a preschool program, a ¾ day kindergarten and an after-school program.As a result of this unexpected turn of events, many parents were left to make alternative arrangements to ensure their children's’ well-being and care. “A lot of our parents have family and friends in the area to help out in an emergency while some of our non-PEA parents worked from home and adjusted their schedules accordingly,” Farnham said.In addition, PEA faculty members who were affected were forced to bring their children to their classes. Students in these teachers’ classes had a generally positive experience and said that they were not at all disrupted.“Class was especially fun with our teacher’s one-year-old child. It lifted our moods,” senior Paul Lee said. “We have a couple of girls in our class, and they were really happy to see the baby. In fact, we asked [our teacher] to bring her baby in a few times already, and she did today, so she let us have fun with her son.”