AHS students in the P.E., Math and English halls of the building experienced a power outage Monday, December 7 at 12:45, which lasted about half an hour until the lights abruptly came back on. The outages at AHS are hard to predict and control, and usually stem from sources outside the school’s control.
“I’m not really sure why the power outage occurred,” said assistant principal Vincent Randazzo. “Probably something in the community like a car accident or transformer malfunction.”
When the lighting malfunctions, only certain areas of the building are subject to the issue. Robert Obando, a math teacher whose classroom is in a windowless area of the school, expressed his frustration about the outages, which sporadically affect his classroom efforts. “I had to stop teaching. I was teaching a lesson for an IB Math class and when the lights went off, I had to stop and we didn’t finish the lesson.” He said, “In the math hall the light goes off a lot. This is the third time I can remember the power going out.”
The school is generally unable to stop power outages, which occur when a transformer or power line feeding into AHS is affected by an outside source. The usual course of action is to call Virginia’s power company to evaluate and fix the issue. “It’s always frustrating when we lose power because we don’t like to interrupt instruction, but I think our students and staff deal pretty with it,” said Randazzo.