ORIGINAL REPORT, 9:30 AM: We’ve been following up on a situation brought to our attention by a Roxhill Elementary School parent – a water shutoff at the school yesterday. We didn’t hear about it until after school was out for the day, but contacted the district immediately, and they couldn’t find any reports of water problems at the campus while checking around last night. First thing this morning, Seattle Public Schools staff started investigating, and here’s what spokesperson Stacy Howard tells us happened: The city was doing water testing/work in the area, and that led to some water discoloration. Instead of following the usual protocol to put up signs marking the faucets as temporarily off-limits until the city finishes flushing the system, Howard says – a process that would usually just take an hour or two – a staff member turned off the school’s water entirely, and unnecessarily. At one point, apparently, a parent learned of this and went to Target to ask if they would donate bottles of water for the kids. Today, the misunderstanding and the water are both cleared up, the water is back on, and fine, according to Howard. We still have a message out to Roxhill principal Sahnica Washington to ask if there’s anything else parents should know about what happened, and we also are checking with Seattle Public Utilities to see what kind of work was being done.

UPDATE, 9 PM: SPU said it wasn’t doing any work. Principal Washington attributed it to a hydrant replacement nearby in the short letter she was planning to send to families – here’s the copy (PDF) we received from SPS.