Today, Friday the 13th of all days, was not an ideal day at Cathedral Prep. Upon my arrival into school, it was unusually dark. At first I did not think much of it, until I heard my fellow peers cheering and screaming in excitement. I immediately came to the realization that this was a power outage, and school was slowly starting to come to an end for the day.
A few things were taken into consideration in order to actually cancel school for the remainder of the day. First and foremost, the health and safety of the students is considered. There were three categories this was broken down into: visibility, sanitation, and food. All of these were possible somehow. Although the power was out, Prep has a generator which was allowing some lighting to be working. Since there was no running water, drinking fountains were not working, but some of the bathrooms were running by battery power and were fully functioning. Lastly, the food in the cafeteria is prepared on gas stoves and ovens which worked fine in the power outage.
With that being said, Prep still was considering canceling school for the rest of the day. The administration talked to Penelec and were informed that power SHOULD turn on at around 10 a.m. The school decided that if power was not on by then, they would begin to get ready for a dismissal. At 10 a.m. the power was still not on and administration began to get ready to dismiss the students. To our disappointment, the power resumed at around 10:20 a.m., right as we were about to be dismissed. Now we are here, still in school. A tear runs down my face as I write about what was almost an early dismissal, and an early start to the weekend. Maybe next time.