Notable Incidents
On February 9, 2004, Jon W. Romano, then 16 and a student at the school, fired three rounds with a 12-gauge shotgun. One teacher, Michael Bennett, was injured in the leg when Romano fired the gun when he was rushed and tackled by Bennett and then assistant principal John Sawchuck. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and the sentence was upheld on appeal in 2007.
Kirk Hellwig, then a social studies teacher, was sentenced to a year in jail for having oral sex with a 16-year-old male student in a classroom during hours of the 2006-2007 school year. He was sentenced in August 2007.
Outbreak of flu and flu-like symptoms occurred in October, 2009. It was confirmed that over 500 students, roughly one-third of the student body, were out of school on a single day. It is believed by many people around East Greenbush that the outbreak began at Columbia's Homecoming Dance that occurred the weekend before. The school district claimed that these were not H1N1 symptoms, but health experts stated that it is hard to differentiate between seasonal and swine flu. It was later confirmed that the Novel H1N1 flu was circulating. A letter was sent home to students and to parents e-mails.
On November 7, 2011, a small fire out broke at the school. The fire started in the technology rooms' vacuum that powers all of the indoor vacuums. This vacuum is located outside of the North Tower of the school. The fire started from unknown causes; however, a likely possibility is that the large buckets that hold all of the vacuumed waste were not properly emptied on schedule. Most of the waste happens to be wood scraps. All students were required to leave the premises without reentering the building.
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Famous quotes containing the words notable and/or incidents:
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—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
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—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)