Lights Back on At Cranston West, School Open Wednesday

After an electrical problem and subsequent loss of power Monday night, the lights are back on at Cranston High School West nearly 24 hours later and students should be able to return to school on Wednesday after losing a day on Tuesday.

Staff members are checking computers and the alarm company is making sure all the alarms are working properly tonight, said Superintendent Judith Lundsten in an interview.

The problem was caused by a failure in a power line that runs underneath an access road that borders the main school building and the school gymnasium, Lundsten said.

Lundsten first noticed the problem during meetings at the school Monday night.

“It seemed like from the light system that something wasn’t working,” Lundsten said.

National Grid arrived at the scene around 8:30 p.m. By 10 p.m. they determined there was a significant problem and at around midnight, Lundsten said she got a call from Ed Collins, facilities director, who said ”there was no way we were going to get the power back on in the building in time for school in the morning,” Ludsten said.

The decision to cancel school was made and by 7 a.m., National Grid had pinpointed the cable with the problem and first began to try to snake a new line through the conduit. That didn’t work, so they ended up having to dig up the road to make the repair this afternoon.

“The lights just came on a few minutes ago,” Lundsten said at around 6:45 p.m. on Tuesday.

It wasn’t the only power-related issue Lundsten had to deal with Tuesday.

An unrelated power outage caused by a downed wire in the Garden City neighborhood caused an outage at Garden City, Glen Hills and Woodridge Elementary Schools in the morning.

Today’s issues come about a week after students at Orchard Farms Elementary School were kept home from school due to ice dams causing water infiltration and damage to ceiling tiles as water leaked into several classrooms.

For that incident, Lundsten said students will not have an extra day at the end of the year to make up for the unanticipated closure. She said she plans on requesting a waiver for Cranston High School West’s closure today from state Education Commissioner Deborah Gist tomorrow.

“I’m hoping that she’ll be generous to excuse the high school folks as well,” Lundsten said. “This is not something we could have anticipated.”

Lundsten is also moving to have two days lost by all Cranston students in the days following the blizzard waived. Cranston was closed down for two more days than most other school districts due to snow removal challenges and unsafe conditions surrounding many of the city’s urban schools where a large number of students make it to school on foot every morning.

All told, it has been a tough winter for Cranston schools in terms of closures and delays. And with the most recent glitch at Cranston High School West, it isn’t just snow that is to blame.