Last night's storm provided great excitement, heavy wind & rain, lots of lightening, and of course, spawned a tornado. Members of our Finance and Operations Team have spent the day assessing the storm's impact on our schools. Once again, WPS was spared the brunt of serious damage from the storm and tornado.
Below is a summary of issues that have been addressed today: Millbury Street Head Start was the only building to lose power. This outage was created by a neighbor's tree snagging power lines as it came down during the tornado/storm. Power remains out there now, however, National Grid crews are on the scene and we expect power to be restored by5:00 pm today, so that building should be available for its programs on tomorrow.
Burncoat Senior HS, Nelson Place, Worcester Arts Magnet School, and Goddard Elementary each experienced water intrusion as a result of the very heavy rain. That cleanup has been underway and normal school operations are expected in those sites tomorrow.
City crews are out working to clear streets and sidewalks in the Grafton Hill and Vernon Hill areas so that buses and children will be able to navigate safely to school tomorrow morning.
I want to express my appreciation to Jeff Martin, Tom Barrett, Brian Allen and all members of the district's trades and custodial crews for the rapid and highly effective response to this weather event! As indicated during the school opening message, these team members worked very hard to have our school sites ready and now they continue to work to restore that readiness for Tuesday morning!
So, schools will be open and operating tomorrow under normal conditions! Should anything occur throughout the evening or overnight to impact that, I will notify you of changes.
UPDATE: Mr. Allen just let us know that Millbury Head Start has their power back on.
