Students in the Whitley County School District had a short school day Monday as classes were dismissed at 12:30 p.m. due to a power outage on the main campus, which affected approximately 1,000 students.
Whitley County Superintendent John Siler said he received a call from his maintenance supervisor at approximately 6:30 a.m. informing him power was out at Whitley Central Primary and Whitley County Middle School.
Maintenance workers contacted Cumberland Valley RECC and they sent someone.
“We thought, to begin with, it was a simple fuse or something there on the electrical line. They replaced it, turned the power back on, and it blew again,” Siler said.
At this point, workers thought they knew what the problem was, which would only take a couple of hours to repair. School officials thought they would have full power restored between 9 – 9:30 a.m.
At approximately that time, workers thought they had the repair made but another fuse or fuses blew on the power line. This time workers traced the problem back to one of the transformers behind Whitley County Middle School, which effected both the middle school and central primary.
Officials expected this repair to take two to four hours to complete.
The middle school had already taken part of their students to the high school gym to get inside air-conditioning.
School officials then made the decision to get the buses back, feed the children a little early and dismiss classes for the day.
“It was just an unusual occurrence. RECC was great. They responded. At one point I looked and there were nine RECC trucks behind the middle school and primary working on different things trying to trace down what the problem was and to make those repairs,” Siler said.
Power was restored at approximately 1:30 p.m.
“We are hopeful our repairs are behind us, and we will be back on normal schedule Tuesday,” Siler said.
After school extracurricular activities were still held Monday afternoon, such as practice for various sports programs.
The 21st Century Club and other indoor enrichment activities after school were cancelled due to the projected time frame for getting power restored.
“We just didn’t know when it would be in that window of time,” Siler noted.
After power was restored, Siler said technology officials were busy Monday afternoon at Whitley County Middle School and Whitley Central Primary going through systems to make sure the power issues had not caused network issues and other problems.
“We should be fully operational Tuesday morning,” he added.
