School To Resume Friday At Troy Shorewood Elementary: Koehl

SHOREWOOD, IL - Troy School District Superintendent Todd Koehl said that Thursday morning's sudden outage of electricity throughout the neighborhood near Troy Shorewood Elementary School left the district with no choice but to cancel classes for the roughly 500 students who go here. Koehl praised the response from parents, noting that the district did not give people much advance notice. After all, the district first learned of the power outage around 7:30 a.m., Koehl said. By 8 a.m. power was still out, prompting the district to cancel classes just at Troy Shorewood. The district's six other school buildings all went on with their regular school days. Troy has around 4,500 students in pre-K through 8th grade and the students live around Shorewood, Joliet and Plainfield.

Koehl spoke with Shorewood Patch around 1 p.m. relaying that everything is back to normal and that none of the Troy Shorewood building's heating, cooling and refrigeration units incurred any damage. He was grateful to parents for making adjustments on the fly to alter their normal work routine as a result of the closure.

"We didn't have a lot of parents show up," he said. "We appreciate the quick response because we understand we turned a wrench" into the days of several parents. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

According to Koehl, he said it was his understanding the power outage was pretty widespread across the Shorewood neighborhood where the community's oldest school is located. Fortunately, he said, power was restored within an hour or so, but Troy schools had no idea at the time the decision was made to call off school as to when the electricity would be restored.

Just before 8 a.m., the Troy Community School District issued an automated message advising parents that Troy Shorewood Elementary School has canceled classes for Thursday because of a neighborhood power outage.

"The principal was right on top of it, and we made a pretty quick decision," Koehl told Shorewood Patch. "The rest of the district is open."

He said that all of Troy's buses will be running on Friday morning as usual. "Tomorrow will be a normal school day," he added.

Koehl, now in his fourth year of leading Troy's school district, said that situations like Thursday's are rare, but do happen from time to time. The last major disruption where a school day was canceled occurred a couple years ago at Hofer Elementary right after winter break.

Staff discovered that a water pipe had broken, he recalled.

Image of Troy Shorewood Elementary via Patch Editor John Ferak

Image of Troy School Superintendent Todd Koehl via school district