Henrico Schools cancels first day for Maybeury and Rivers Edge elementaries, sends students home from Freeman

School power outages and air conditioning issues caused Henrico Schools to cancel the first day of classes on Aug. 19 for three West End schools.

On Friday, HCPS notified families from Rivers Edge Elementary that the school was experiencing power outages and would not open to students until Wednesday, Aug. 21. Families from Maybeury Elementary were notified late Sunday night that the school was without power due to storms in the area and would not open until Tuesday, Aug. 20.

While students arrived Monday morning for the first day at Douglas S. Freeman High, they were sent home just a half hour later at 9:30 a.m. due to power outages and AC outages. A few hours later, Principal John Marshall told families that power was restored and the school would open Tuesday.

Students from Rivers Edge will need to wait an extra day to return to school so that HCPS can ensure the AC is working properly, according to HCPS Communications Director Eileen Cox.

“Crews identified an electrical issue on Friday that needs to be addressed. Electricians have worked through the weekend and are still on site,” Cox said. “Once power is turned back on and the AC can cool the building, students will go back to school Wednesday.”

While other schools may be experiencing some AC issues in individual areas of the building, no schools have reported any building-wide AC outages Monday, according to Cox.

“There are no building-wise AC problems reported today,” Cox said. “There may be individual areas of some buildings that are warm. If/when those reports are submitted, they are addressed by HCPS facilities on a case-by-case basis.”

Severe storms this past weekend left more than 8,000 Henrico homes and businesses without power Sunday night, with more than 2,000 still without power on Monday morning.

Extensive storm damage was reported in areas surrounding Maybeury Elementary and one man was killed late Sunday afternoon on Maybeury Drive after a tree fell onto his vehicle.

The weekend’s storms also caused outages at Freeman, with 51 of 100 classrooms and both gyms being without lights or AC on Monday morning. Flooding in the building’s basement was also reported Sunday night and several layers of the school’s safety protocols were “not at full strength” on Monday, according to an email Marshall sent to families.

“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,” Marshall wrote. “I want to personally thank you for the flexibility that we had to have in our community over the last 24 hours and acknowledge that getting your kids ready for the day, in some cases without power, only to have us send them right back, was a huge lift and a challenge.”

Outages at both Freeman and Maybeury were storm-related, Cox said, while outages at Rivers Edge are due to electrical issues unrelated to storms.

During the first week of school last year, HCPS experienced widespread AC outages, with 23 schools reporting AC issues and five of those schools reporting school-wide outages. Several schools continued to report AC issues weeks later in September.

To avoid similar issues this year, HCPS facilities teams made sure to closely monitor any HVAC issues this past summer, HCPS Chief of Operations Lenny Pritchard said at an Aug. 8 Henrico School Board meeting.

“We have been watching HVAC systems closely and actually reset buildings to occupied mode earlier than usual to give us more time to troubleshoot any potential problems,” Pritchard said. “So far so good, but as you can know, these are incredibly large and complex systems.”

HCPS is also actively recruiting for 12 maintenance supervisor positions this year to help address issues more quickly, Pritchard said.

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Liana Hardy is the Citizen’s Report for America Corps member and education reporter. Her position is dependent upon reader support; make a tax-deductible contribution to the Citizen through RFA here.