ASHLAND — Ashland City Schools will operate under a two-hour delay schedule on Friday, following uncertainty Thursday afternoon, but the high school will close.
It remained unclear late Thursday afternoon if Ashland City Schools will re-open Friday after a power outage. The district announced its two-hour delay at 5:30 p.m. and then closed only the high school at 7:15 a.m. Friday.
“The district will continue to work with BCU Electric on solutions with hopes of returning our children to school as soon as it is safe and heat has been restored to our buildings,” the district said in an emailed press release Thursday at 4:30 p.m.
The press release did not say definitively whether school will be back in session on Friday. Requests for comment from the district were not returned.
The district was closed Thursday after a Wednesday evening power outage.
The press release said the power failure happened with “the main electrical vault on Katherine Avenue.”
A team of district officials “worked with BCU late into (Wednesday) night to determine the correct actions to keep heat in the building and protect the plumbing from the freezing temperatures,” read the district’s press release.
Lauren Siburkis, a spokeswoman with Ohio Edison — the district’s electricity provider — said the power outage was not caused by the utility company.
“It was due to an issue on their customer-owned equipment, not due to anything caused by Ohio Edison,” Siburkis said.
A BCU Electric Inc. truck sat outside in a high school parking lot next to a utility pole on Thursday afternoon along Katherine Avenue at 1 p.m.
BCU was not immediately available to comment.
School board president Zack Truax was at the high school when the building lost power. He was helping set up for a wrestling meet.
Truax, who stressed he is not an electrician, said the power outage was not caused by a generator. He said it looked like a “transformer on a telephone pole next to the teacher lot at the high school” that malfunctioned.
“There was electrical equipment tied into the pole and a little bit of smoke coming out of it — like puffs of smoke coming out of it,” he said, adding he did not see fire or smoke in the high school or middle school.
When asked why the entire school district was closed because of the power outage, he referred to Supt. Doug Marrah.
Other school board members also referred to Marrah when asked if school will be back in session Friday.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
