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After a full school day without any power outages, staff from the San Ramon Valley Unified School District have announced that all schools will remain open on Thursday (Oct. 10), regardless of whether or not Pacific Gas and Electric turns off the power.
Currently, PG&E officials have said that power outages are expected to affect large portions of San Ramon — in addition to more than 800,000 Californians thought the state according to PG&E– starting at 8 p.m. on Wednesday that could last for multiple days.
Parents and students at schools in Danville will not have to be as worried with the outages after the California Office of Emergency Services announced that the town is not expected to be affected.
“Please keep in mind that, as we have seen, this information is fluid based on changing weather conditions. PG&E is making the decisions for its customers,” district officials said in a statement to parents and staff. “As of right now, none of our schools have been affected. Classes went smoothly at all school sites today. We thank everyone for their patience and support as we navigate this challenging situation.”
On Tuesday district officials announced that schools would remain open at least during the first days of the power outages, but that proper precautions were being made to ensure that the school day would proceed as smoothly as possible.
“The safety of our students and staff remains our first priority. We will continue to provide updated information as it becomes available to us. In areas impacted by outages, we do ask our community to be aware that traffic lights may not be operational. As always, please be patient and plan for possible traffic delays,” they added.
Recognizing that while some residents may be unable to keep devices charged during the shutoff, in the event of a power outage district officials will be sending messages to SRVUSD community members using their automated phone system in addition to sending messages by email.
“We apologize for the duplicate messages some may receive, but we know you understand that we need to reach out in as many ways as possible in order to reach as many families as possible,” SRVUSD said.
District officials added that they will be putting out updates on the SRVUSD website homepage, as well as its Facebook (facebook.com/srvusd) and Twitter accounts (@SRVUSD1), and any additional questions can be directed via email to communications@srvusd.net.
Residents can also opt-in to receive emergency text messages from SRVUSD by texting “yes” to 67587.
On Tuesday, PG&E’s main website was down following announcement of the shutoffs, which was heavily criticized by users. As of press time Wednesday afternoon, the site (http://www.pge.com/pspsupdates) was still unavailable but PG&E continues to post updates on their Twitter account @PGE4Me. A Twitter account is not needed to view their messages.
PG&E also has two other websites with limited information available about the power shutoffs: www.pgecurrents.com and www.pgealerts.com.