Students in Dupo School District 196 received an unexpected day off Wednesday when officials shut down school to deal with boiler problems at the high school.

Superintendent Terry Milt said that although everything was fine and all the parts of the junior and senior high school had heat on Wednesday, they canceled school as a precaution.

The district also canceled a boy's basketball game set for Wednesday night against New Athens.

Milt said the problem stemmed from a planned power outage on Sunday when the district had work done on the steam boilers that supply heat to the junior and senior high complex.

"The complex actually is divided into three different wings," he said. "There were pockets in the high school wing that would go without heat for a time and then be heated again. The junior high and the vocational wings were fine."

A blown pressure valve resulted in some air in the lines and the water could not get through, causing some of the intermittent outages, he said.

Everything has been fixed and the system is working fine now, Milt said.

"It has run all day and we are all set to go on Thursday," Milt said.