Electricity at Columbus East High School is fully back online after the school switched to a day of eLearning today due to a partial power outage at the school.
As of about 1 p.m., Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. Director of Operations Brett Boezeman said that power had been restored, and systems were being turned on in phases to ensure that there were no further problems. An hour later, BCSC announced that after-school events would resume this afternoon, with students returning to in-person classes on Friday.
The school corporation had previously announced on Wednesday night that “critical portions” of the high school were without power. BCSC officials said that while they were working with Duke Energy to fix the problem as soon as possible, East students might have to move to eLearning on Thursday. At about 4:30 a.m. Thursday, BCSC confirmed that the building was closed to students, and an eLearning day would occur.
Teachers worked on site for at least some of the day Thursday, as certain areas of the building still had power and internet connectivity, said Boezeman.
“It’s rare for us to just have eLearning at one building,” he said. “It’s usually snow-related and affects the entire district, or whatever. So this is a little bit new for us to work through, but all things considered, it seems to be going pretty well.”
In discussing the potential cause of the outage, Boezeman said that some BCSC buildings on the east side of town experienced a brief outage around 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, with power going out and then quickly coming back on. School officials believe this may be when the more serious outage began at East, as there may have been a surge of power when things came back online.
The longer-lasting outage is believed to have been limited to just the high school. It primarily affected the north end of the building, including the auditorium, most of the C4 wing, dental and science labs, and the cafeteria.
Read the full story in Friday’s edition of The Republic.
