An Update on the San Marino Unified School District’s Power Outage

Dear Parent/Guardian,

As you may know, the electrical power was out at all of our schools for a period of time today. Please be aware that at no time were students in an unsafe situation. Although district phones and computers were down, cell phones and iPads continued to work, had we needed them in any kind of emergency.

Carver and the High School had the power restored around 11:00 AM, and Huntington and Valentine were back on-line by 1:00 PM. We were able to serve lunch at all schools, and the district’s back-up generator was used to provide power to the HMS/Valentine cafeteria.

The school district received no prior notification of the outage. A relatively small area of San Marino was notified that beginning last night, power would be cut off to that area. The school district is not in that area. Fire Chief Frawley informed me just before 1:00 today that the power company did not notify the district because they expected we would not be affected by the outage. When the power was switched back on, apparently some wires had been crossed, and the power went out in a much broader area, which included all of our schools.

The incident did give us a chance to test our ability to communicate in a power outage, and we were able to make the necessary communications. I want to stress again that there was never a safety issue for your children. Thank you for your understanding.

Respectfully,

Loren Kleinrock
Superintendent