Parents question school communication after Thermal power outage

THERMAL, Calif. (KESQ) - Parents are calling for clearer and faster communication from the Coachella Valley Unified School District after a power outage affected John Kelley Elementary School, La Familia High School and the district office Thursday, as district officials defend their response and say staff needed time to assess changing conditions before initiating an emergency dismissal.

The concerns center on the period between the first signs of electrical trouble at John Kelley and when families were told students would be dismissed early.

District officials say the situation did not begin as a complete power outage. Parents, however, say students were already reporting problems with air conditioning and increasingly uncomfortable conditions while families were trying to determine what was happening.

Parents describe concerns before dismissal

CVUSD parent Loretta Perez said she received her first district message at approximately 10:33 a.m. Thursday.

“So I was notified around 10:33 because I received a message stating that there was no internet and no phone from the parent portal that we have called ParentSquare,” Perez said. “And so we assumed it was just that, just the internet and phone.”

Perez said she then began receiving messages from other families indicating the problem could be more widespread. She said it was not until 11:52 a.m. that she received a message telling families to pick up their children.

By that point, Perez said parents were sharing concerns about conditions inside John Kelley.

“I got messages that the cafeteria was hitting 90 degrees,” Perez said. “There’s children in there sweating. I still received messages after children went home that children started to get fevers.”

Those reports about the cafeteria temperature and children becoming sick came to Perez from others and were not independently verified by News Channel 3.

Blanca Rocha, who has children at John Kelley, said she also initially understood the issue to involve phone lines and some air conditioning units.

Rocha said she called her children and was told some classrooms had air conditioning problems and students were being moved into rooms where the AC was working. She later heard from another parent that the school had lost power and decided to go to campus herself.

Rocha said one of her children told her the air conditioning was not working when she arrived in her classroom that morning.

“My daughter did tell me that as soon as I dropped her off and she walked into her classroom, her AC was not working, so they were sweating,” Rocha said.

Rocha said her younger son complained of a headache when she picked him up and later developed a fever and was shaking.

District says outage developed in stages

CVUSD Maintenance Coordinator Timothy Hernandez said the district's response began when staff at John Kelley reported an electrical disruption.

Hernandez said he and the district electrician went to the school to check the incoming power and initially determined that only a section of classrooms was affected.

“At this time it was reported just a section of classrooms were without power,” Hernandez said. “We opened up the switchgear. We check our incoming circuits, our three legs of power. And at this point it was identified that we're without one phase of power incoming. That's when we notified IID about the service interruption.”

Hernandez explained that the partial loss of power meant some air conditioning equipment could continue operating while other units could not.

The situation then changed.

“That’s when we received notification that the district office, La Familia and John Kelley itself had lost power completely,” Hernandez said.

District officials say they were notified that all power was down at approximately 10:55 a.m. They say the emergency dismissal was completed within an hour, a process that included coordinating transportation and contacting families to determine whether someone would be home to receive elementary students being sent home by bus.

Amelia Nino, CVUSD's Director of Risk Management and Benefits, said the district's process requires staff to first determine what is happening before communicating the next steps to families.

“Once we get an assessment, then we will go ahead and send out communication to parents,” Nino said. “We would need to see what that assessment is first before sending out any type of communication.”

Nino said several departments can be involved in an emergency dismissal, including transportation, nutritional services and school administrators.

She also said the district believes its communication Thursday was timely.

“There was communication with district office, district office with the school principal, after that with parents,” Nino said. “So I do believe the communication was sent out in a timely manner.”

Parents want a clearer protocol

The disagreement is not necessarily over whether the district eventually responded, but whether parents should have received more information while officials were still assessing the situation.

Rocha said families should not have to wait for a final determination before being told conditions at their child's school are changing.

“It falls back on the communication,” Rocha said. “It was just a lack of communication.”

Perez said she wants the district's emergency procedures to be readily available to families so parents know what to expect before another outage or similar emergency occurs.

“I do want to make sure that our parents can access true protocol that should be on the website and available to every parent in English and Spanish,” Perez said.

Perez also suggested the district consider additional ways to keep students cool while a dismissal is being organized, including making greater use of air-conditioned buses when possible.

District considering generators

District officials say they are also looking at a longer-term solution for future outages.

Hernandez said CVUSD is considering strategically placed generators with a goal that goes beyond powering only essential equipment.

“The goal is to power the whole school so that if we're without power for a long period of time, there's no disruption to academic learning, and you're still able to run all your buildings, mechanical systems and your electricity to its full capacity,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez said the district also has systems for monitoring classroom temperatures. If those systems are unavailable because of an outage, staff can physically check temperatures. He said students can be relocated to cooler classrooms when possible, with evacuation becoming an option if adequate cooling is not available.

For the parents who spoke with News Channel 3, the focus now is making sure families have more information while those decisions are being made.

They say they understand that arranging buses, evaluating conditions and ensuring young students have someone waiting for them at home takes time. What they want is earlier communication during that process - even if the district does not yet have every answer.