(NMB) A power outage that affected the East side of Chinook on Wednesday morning shut down school for grades 7 through 12. The school had no furnace and no phones due to the outage. Chinook Schools Superintendent Fred Hofman told New Media Broadcasters that Northwestern Energy anticipated having the power back on by 1pm Wednesday afternoon, and although the power was restored earlier than that, the decision had been made to cancel classes for the day.
“The school is very dark on the inside in the hallways. It’s not necessarily safe and there is no heat. So, we made the decision to go ahead and shut the school down.”-Hofman
The Chinook Elementary School was not affected by the power outage and had classes on Wednesday as normal. Superintendent Hofman said it is not known yet for sure whether they will have to make up the day that was lost.
“We do have a few extra minutes built in so we should be okay from our number of days for the school year but it’s possible we will have to make up the day later on down the line.”-Hofman
School in Chinook for grades 7 through 12 will be held as normal Thursday.
