FARMINGTON — Regional School Unit 9 (RSU 9) had to send students home early Monday, Jan. 31, after an issue with heating at Mt. Blue Middle School.
On Monday morning, the district sent out an announcement that the middle school “ran out of oil” the night before. While waiting for the delivery to come in and the building to warm back up, middle school students were bussed alongside high schoolers to the Mt. Blue campus. They were planning to keep the students in the gym until they could return to the middle school.
An update was posted around 10 a.m. informing the community that they were sending middle school students home for the day. They offered students bussing home but said students could be picked up at the middle school if parents chose to do so.
“Unfortunately, on this cold day, it is going to take us too long to bring Mt. Blue Middle School’s heat up to support all of our classrooms,” Elkington wrote. “Our schools are on a heating oil delivery plan that is supposed to not allow this kind of error to occur. As soon as we find out what happened we will correct it and let you know what happened.”
In a letter to families sent later in the day, MBMS Principal James Black wrote that “the dismissal of students is always a last resort effort after all other possibilities are exhausted.”
Heat was restored and school resumed as usual at MBMS on Tuesday, Feb. 1.
Superintendent Chris Elkington explained in a letter on Tuesday that “a series of events all happened at one time to cause the difficulties we experienced” that led to the closure.
He explained that because of the “very cold temperatures” of late, the furnace (used at MBMS, Cascade Brook School, and the bus garage) “burned an awful lot of oil” — more than anticipated — Friday through Sunday. As a result, “the tank emptied quickly triggering the heat shut off.”
Elkington added that “our [oil] supplier like us, is having equipment issues (down two trucks), staffing issues (driver openings, COVID etc.) along with office staffing changes with not a lot of background history about our usage.”
Additionally, there were also pipe damages which led to leaks in two classrooms at MBMS.
The series of events includes issues with the messaging system RSU 9 uses to notify parents about things like school closures.
The post said this message had been sent out to families at 7:30 a.m., but that it “did not reach all MBMS families.” Parents and families reported not having received the message and unknowingly dropped their kids off at the middle school for the day.
The district learned that the first message, sent via mass-communications system BrightArrow, was sent with a duplicate recipient list.
Moving forward, Elkington said the district has multiple solutions in mind to prevent a situation like this in the future:
• MBMS will not be allowed to have their weekly tank capacity reading on Friday with a number less than 3,500 gallons.
• If the number is significantly below this minimum, the district will ask for an immediate delivery.
• Tank reads will now happen each morning by maintenance staff (at each school) for the next six weeks so we can have better oil usage trends during cold weather. After that period, the district will return to normal readings twice a week.
• Tank reads will also include natural gas tanks.
Additionally, the communications error has served as a “reminder” to ensure mass communications are sent to the right list.
“I wish this did not happen and again apologize for the difficulties many were put through,” Elkington signed off in his letter. “Thanks go to each of you [families, students, staff] for your continued understanding and patience during the 2021-2022 school year as all of us in RSU 9 work together to problem-solve in support of our students.”
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