Wicomico County Public Schools: All power has been restored.

Wrapup on this morning's power outage (affecting Bennett Middle, Wicomico Middle, Parkside High, Fruitland Primary): All power has been restored at all affected schools in the county. When power went out at approximately 7:30 am, Delmarva Power worked diligently to ensure that it was restored in a timely manner, with cooperation from school system officials as they worked to ensure safe and orderly operations in the affected schools.

Delmarva Power updates the school system regularly with estimated times for restoration, and the situation is assessed every few minutes. A determination regarding school closing is made based on Delmarva Power's forecasted restoration times. The school system was prepared to send out a SchoolMessenger call to parents of students in any affected schools around 9 a.m. if needed, but no call was made as Delmarva Power was confident at that point that power would be restored to the last two schools (Parkside and Bennett Middle) shortly, as it was.

Many factors affect our decision on when to send students home. Transportation of students, the ability to feed them lunch, the time of day for availability of parents to receive their children at home, and the safety of our children all must be considered. Fortunately, we did not have to send our students home today due to this power outage, as the last school had power back on by 9:20 a.m.

At all times, students were safe and we were quickly able to return to normal operating procedures. Parents in the affected schools will receive a SchoolMessenger call from their child's school explaining the circumstances this morning and letting the parents know that the school day is continuing.

Thanks to everyone, and especially our students and staff and Delmarva Power, for their excellent work this morning.