Bonneville School District 93 deals with major power outage
At 10 a.m. on a Wednesday, you’d expect that Tiebreaker Elementary School would be full of kids. That’s where you’re wrong.
“Our power went out,” said McClain, a student at Tiebreaker Elementary. “It’s like all the schools in the district, so we just got out of school early.”
Bonneville School District 93 students, faculty and staff went home early after Rocky Mountain Power reported a loss of transmission in the area.
A few different factors played into the cancellation of school.
“It was widespread,” said Scott Woolstenhulme, the superintendent for Bonneville School District 93. “It wasn’t just one or two schools but it was literally across the entire district. All the way from Woodland Hills (Elementary School), all the way up to Ucon (Elementary School).”
The only schools in the district that had power were Fairview Elementary, Falls Valley Elementary and Hillcrest High Schools.
No power meant no light. That meant rooms and hallways left students in the dark.
“I mean the kids couldn’t see very well without the lights,” said Ashley Castle, a sixth-grade teacher at Tiebreaker Elementary School. “It kind of destroyed the normal routine of our day.”
The power outage also caused the water systems in the area not to work. So plumbing did not function properly and kitchen staff could not work to prepare lunches.
“We looked at the timeline from Rocky Mountain Power, the estimate was 3 to 3 1/2 hours before the power was to come back on,” Woolstenhulme. “At that point, given those three factors, we decided it would be best to cancel school for the day.”
For kids who were already at school, there was a plan for security when it came time to pick them up.
Tiebreaker Elementary School, for example, had parents wait in the foyer and sign out their student. Runners would then go and find the student and reunite them with their parent.
“We just wanted to make sure we didn’t have parents wandering through the building,” said Kent Patterson, Tiebreaker Elementary principal.
All of the principals in the district and district staff met Wednesday afternoon to discuss how to plan better in case something were to happen like this again.
