A power outage closed BonDeCroft Elementary in White County Wednesday.
Director of Schools Kurt Dronebarger said the decision to close BonDeCroft was made after utility crews reported that the school’s power would not be restored in time. Dronebarger said there were also lots of tree limbs down on the roads in the area that would have made things even more challenging.
“It started as a two-hour delay,” Dronebarger said. “But when it became obvious that we weren’t going to have power all day with dropping temperatures and the fact that the hallways are very dark, we had food and water, but we didn’t feel like there would be a lot of learning that was going to, quality learning that was going to take place. That ultimately was the decision.”
Dronebarger said the district had to use BonDeCroft’s last budgeted snow day on the closure. Dronebarger said utility crews have assured him that they are working hard to repair the outage so students can return to school Thursday.
“It does put BonDeCroft on a little different schedule as far as those days go but we have some other options,” Dronebarger said. “We’re technically out of snow days but we have an in-service day later in the year that we could utilize for BonDeCroft if we needed to, if we needed to make up the day.”
Dronebarger said the district still has both of its state-permitted virtual days to help offset Wednesday’s closure as well. Dronebarger said the rest of the district stayed open to save the final snow day for Thursday in case a potential winter weather advisory for Wednesday night brings severe weather.
“BonDeCroft Elementary is a great school, but it’s our smallest school,” Dronebarger said. “It’s got about 175 students and we felt like we could get about the other 3,500 students to school safely today.”
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