Students at Center Township Elementary School will continue to drink bottled water, as the Butler School District looks into issues with the tap water there.

On April 16, a teacher discovered “black particles” in the school's water, which prompted administrators to notify parents and shut off the water until tests could be done.

This week, Principal Jeffrey Mathieson sent home a follow-up letter detailing the results of lab tests after samples were collected from 10 different water fixtures by Gannett Fleming engineers.

The samples from Room 21 were above the Department of Environmental Protection's action levels for copper, aluminum and iron, according to the test results. The sample from that room had 3 parts per billion (ppb) of lead, which is below the state's action level of 15 ppb. The other nine samples were all below the action levels for metals and inorganics.

“While these elevated limits do not pose a health concern, they do indicate a need to address a potential plumbing issue,” Mathieson wrote in the letter.

The school, following the engineers' recommendations, will use tap water for handwashing and toilets, but will distribute bottled water for drinking.

Gannett Fleming also confirmed that the black specks did not present any danger and were likely caused by a power outage, Mathieson wrote.

The district also is continuing to regularly test the water at Summit Township Elementary School, which was connected to a public water line last year and reopened to students earlier this year. While previously connected to a well, water at the school was found to have unsafe levels of copper in 2016 and 2017.

The district recently posted to its website test results from five samples collected from the school April 13. Each sample had less than 1 ppb of lead, according to the lab report.

The district announced March 26 that a sink had been replaced in Summit Elementary after test results showed elevated levels of copper.