First day of class at Eau Gallie High School canceled due to power outage

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — The first day of classes at Eau Gallie High School in Melbourne were canceled Thursday due to a power outage, Brevard Public Schools officials announced on social media.

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The district had staff members on campus to assist any students who needed help returning home.

Crews from Florida Power & Light were on campus attempting to restore power Thursday morning. Once they determined it would take until at least early afternoon to fix the problem, the district made the decision to cancel class for the day.

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“FPL said they thought it would be several more hours before they could restore the power, so unfortunately, we had to cancel school for today,” BPS Communications Officer Russ Bruhn said. “We do expect things to be back to normal this afternoon, which would mean a normal school day tomorrow.”

Thursday’s extracurricular activities were also canceled at Eau Gallie High School because of the outage. They have not said what may have caused it.

Things ran more smoothly over at Discovery Elementary School in Palm Bay where Superintendent Dr. Mark Rendell greeted students and parents as they arrived for the first day.

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“We’re really excited to start another chapter in our education journey,” Dr. Rendell said. “Parents just need to be patient today. Everybody’s excited; everyone wants things to go perfect. The first day’s not always perfect.”

Dr. Rendell says the district cleared one major hurdle this summer: getting more students to class on time.

“We had a bus driver shortage at the end of last year and we significantly increased bus driver pay,” Dr. Rendell explained. “And right now, we have enough drivers in our pipeline to run every route on time.”

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Rendell says they’re not necessarily expecting to get through the first day with all the routes on time because some drivers are still going through training.

While they have enough bus drivers, Brevard Public Schools officials say they’re still working to fill approximately 90 instructional vacancies, which include teachers and support staff.

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