A school-wide power outage forced students to be sent home at 12:30 p.m. after staff and students attempted to keep classes running without internet access on Oct. 9.
The power and internet went out at the beginning of first period, causing hallway lights to dim, all chromebooks and box lights to stop working and elevators to be inoperative. With the P.A. system still running in the early stages of the day, staff members were able to inform students and teachers of the issue and safely transition from first to second period. Teachers and administrators mainly dealt with the issues occurring in the building, while Principal Dr. Joseph Bostic was outside handling communication.
However, major communication difficulties began when the P.A. system stopped working and teachers were only able to be reached via Parent Square to be told to keep students in their second period for all of advisory and third period for longer than usual. “I went to the counseling office and gathered everybody who was free. We also sent out a radio message to anybody who was available,” Assistant Principal Heidi Vermillion said.
The power was on and off and the local maintenance team worked with MCPS electricians and Pepco to bring it back to a usable state to continue with instruction and keep students in school. Although this school usually has lights that occasionally flicker, more lights throughout the building were either completely off or aggressively flickering due to the power outage. Senior Sedi Gborglah said, “I had a big concern with the lights flickering because I kept thinking about if someone was epileptic, the lights could trigger a seizure.”
Another problem that arose was getting students lunch. Without power, the cafeteria is unable to use their appliances such as stoves to heat up lunches. Since they couldn’t serve their usual food, they sent an order to MCPS food services for bagged lunches to give to students instead. With students staying in fourth period for all of lunch, the administration team asked staff members and student leaders to help distribute lunches to every student who needed one. The lunches were turkey or ham sandwiches, and those involved in this task went door-to-door to every classroom with a cart or tray of food to make sure students who are usual lunch buyers had something to eat.
The Department of Food and Nutrition Services finalized their decisions to order lunches at around 10 a.m. and the school received all of the food within an hour later. The department used an equation involving the number of students who ordered lunch the day before, past orders and the population of the whole school to estimate the number of lunches they needed to order. This process had to be precise and thoroughly calculated to ensure that no students went without lunch. “I think they did a really good job at finding a way to communicate with the PA system down. [Distributing food] was stressful, however, I was glad to help and it was really fulfilling,” senior Peace Tiam said.
This is not the first time that this school experienced a power outage. Last year a power outage kept students in first period for hours, and the year before that a plane crashed into power lines, causing a county-wide power outage. This community is at risk of experiencing these issues, and with education becoming more and more digital, it is important to learn how to be more efficient when dealing with power outages. “We’ve already been meeting with some of the staff to get a gauge so we can collaborate and make the process better, so that if it ever happens again, then it runs more smoothly,” Vermillion said.
