The lights are back on at Statesboro High School and classes will resume Monday morning.

According to a release Sunday afternoon from Hayley Greene, public relations director for Bulloch County Public Schools, “Power has been fully restored at Statesboro High and classes and activities will return to a normal schedule Monday.”

An electrical power failure at Statesboro High Friday prompted the school to send students home early and cancel weekend events, as well. The failure was caused by a problem with a circuit breaker system at the school, according to school system and Georgia Power officials.

“While instruction can normally continue at our schools during brief utility outages, it was determined that this outage would be for an extended amount of time, and that it would also require the building's emergency backup power sources to be shut down while the issue was resolved,” Greene said in Sunday’s release. “For this reason, classes were dismissed early on Friday and Saturday's scheduled events postponed.”
Statesboro High’s early Friday closing procedure included notifications to parents by phone, email and text messages, a 12:05 p.m. dismissal time for car riders and an early bus route.

Weekend events previously scheduled at the school, including the Friday, April 12, home soccer games and the Saturday, April 13, Walk at Womack and Miss Statesboro High School Pageant were postponed. Greene said they would be rescheduled.

Georgia Power’s Statesboro area manager, Joel Hanner said Friday that outages had occurred on some of Georgia Power’s lines in Bulloch County Thursday night when there were strong, gusty winds, but said none had been indicated as occurring at the school.

“We had a few large transmission lines where wind caused trees to brush them, or one of them, at least, fell, and it impacted large parts of town, but no more than probably two and to five minutes,” Hanner said.

These included one brief outage along Fair Road, another in the Southeast Bulloch area and another around Oliver Road, momentarily affecting about 1,600, about 1,300 and about 1,900 customer locations each. These occurred around 1:20 a.m. Friday morning.