Three Lake Travis Independent School District campuses lost water pressure Thursday, forcing early student pickups after restrooms across the buildings stopped working. Rough Hollow Elementary, Lake Travis Middle and Bee Cave Middle were all affected, with staff scrambling to organize car-rider lines and cross-check authorized guardians so families could retrieve their kids mid-day.
According to KXAN Austin, the outage disrupted restroom access at all three schools, and crews were working to restore water service as of Thursday afternoon. Rough Hollow Elementary began dismissing students through its front car-rider line and said it may relocate students to another LTISD facility, with more updates to come as needed, per the same report. At Lake Travis Middle, staff kept lunch running as normal and handed out bottled water even as restrooms throughout the building remained unusable.
How Each Campus Handled the Scramble
Lake Travis Middle organized pickup by grade level: sixth graders went to the front car-rider line, seventh graders to the bus line near the cafeteria, and eighth graders to the car-rider line by the tennis courts, the outlet reported. Families with multiple siblings were told to use the dismissal zone assigned to the youngest child, and staff gathered student names as they came through the line, only releasing kids to parents or legal guardians listed in the district’s Skyward system. Parents seeking to pick up a student not normally authorized for release were asked to email the appropriate grade-level assistant principal — Mr. Toth for sixth grade, Ms. Bryant for seventh, or Ms. St. Clair for eighth, according to KXAN.
Bee Cave Middle followed a similar playbook, continuing lunch service and distributing bottled water while restrooms sat unavailable campuswide. Sixth graders were directed to the cafeteria, seventh graders to the front office, and eighth graders to the bus loop by the eighth-grade house, with families of multiple siblings also routed through the front office. Staff assisted with the pickup process throughout, and only guardians listed in Skyward were permitted to collect students, the outlet noted.
A Utility System Already Under Strain
The disruption did not happen in isolation. Just a day earlier, Crossroads Utility Services issued a boil water notice for Travis County Municipal Utility Districts 11, 12 and 13 — the districts covering the Rough Hollow area — citing system capacity issues, according to the City of Lakeway. Two days before that, the West Travis County Public Utility Agency placed its entire service area under Stage 3 mandatory water restrictions after storage tanks fell to critically low levels, the agency said. WTCPUA draws treated surface water from Lake Travis to supply western Travis and northern Hays counties…