Tough Day For Fort Bend High Schoolers

High winds knocked out power to Elkins High sometime last night, causing a basketball game to be canceled. But even though power wasn’t restored as the school began opening this morning, parents were not informed and kids went as if it was a normal day.

Once they got there they were herded into a central area, where they sat around with no power, reportedly not being allowed to leave. Some of them hag gotten there by 7 a.m, and remained until power finally went back on at 9:20 a.m.

Which is when parents were finally informed of the whole thing. Some of whom started wondering if the district just wanted to make sure Elkins’ Average Daily Attendance figures, which affect state funding, weren’t affected by the outage.

What took so long to tell parents, Fort Bend ISD? “CenterPoint was at the campus early this morning, and felt they could get the power on quickly,” FBISD spokeswoman Mary Ann Simpson tells Hair Balls.

Here’s the statement that eventually went to parents:

Dear Elkins parents,
The power outage at the campus earlier this morning was restored at
approximately 9:20 am. According to CenterPoint, the outage was caused
by high winds experienced early this morning. The district was
preparing to dismiss students just as it learned the power was restored.
The campus will operate on a modified schedule today-and lunch will be
served. Again, the power was restored at the Elkins campus at
approximately 9:20 this morning by Center Point.

That wasn’t the only incident today. At Clements,a blown breaker caused some smoking and a fire alarm went off.

The message from FBSID on that one:

Earlier today a motor in the air handler room blew a breaker and the
campus experienced a power outage. The situation caused smoke in the
air handler room which triggered the fire alarm. Students were
evacuated at 12:19 pm. The fire department arrived immediately,
investigated the situation and cleared students and staff to return to
the building at 12:45 pm. The campus is operating on partial power and
under a modified schedule for the remainder of the day. All students
were served lunch. The power outage also caused computers and phones
service to go down. We anticipate all problems to be fixed before
classes begin tomorrow. Students handled the situation in a very orderly
and organized manner.

The school day’s pretty much over. We think nothing else will happen in Fort Bend.