Freeman High School principal apologizes after sending students home minutes into first school day

Freeman High School, located in the West End of Henrico County, closed Monday morning just hours after it opened for the first day of classes.

A fast-moving storm knocked out power to thousands of people in Henrico on Sunday. While most of those Dominion Energy customers have had their power restored, the outage continued to impact the high school.

“I apologize that this message is coming at the 11th hour, but I was really hopeful that our repair crews, who have worked incredibly hard last night and all this morning, would have us up and running before students arrived,” Freeman High School Principal John Marshall wrote in an email to parents. “With about half of the building without lights or air conditioning, and some of our emergency safeguards not at full capacity, we will need to wait until tomorrow to start this great year together.”