Monday energy demands close Maple Lake schools

School closings are a common occurrence in Minnesota when snow, ice or fog present unsafe conditions for transporting students.

But Monday’s emergency closing of Maple Lake Schools on a day of blue skies, sunshine and 90-degree temperatures caught everyone by surprise.

Maple Lake was one of about 15 outstate schools that closed midway through the school day when Xcel Energy asked schools participating in its Energy Saver Program to reduce electricity usage due to high electrical demand on Monday. Other area schools that closed were Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted, Holdingford, and Paynesville.

And because St. Timothy’s School depends on District 881 bus services to transport its students, that school also closed on Monday.

Students were sent home at 11:15 a.m. in a rare situation that prompted Twin Cities TV news crews to pay visits to Maple Lake because of its proximity to the metro area. Images of students leaving the elementary school and interviews of Superintendent Mark Redemske and local parents were featured on the newscasts of TV channels 5, 9 and 29.

It was reported on the newscasts that 600 schools in the upper midwest were affected, with some closing and others making an attempt to cut electrical usage.

Xcel Energy spokesman Ed Legge said the events of Monday were a rare occurrence, noting that the temperature was 14 degrees above normal for this time of year and that an unscheduled outage to repair faulty equipment at the Sherco plant in Becker contributed to the situation.

“What we anticipated was an electrical load that was going to call for more than what was available in our system and on the open market at an affordable price,” he said.  Legge said requests to schools to reduce electrical usage are not common and most occur during the summer when school is not in session, which is why the discount program for schools has allowed districts to save large sums of money while incurring minimal disruption to school operations.

“They balance out the possibility of an interruption of services with the fact that it doesn’t happen often and an occasional occurrence is worth what they save,” he said.

At Monday’s school board meeting, Redemske said the school was notified by Xcel at 8:45 a.m. that it would be asked to cut power down to 65 kilowatts from its average summer usage of 427. Getting down to the level required by the Xcel contract required turning off lights, air-conditioning, computer and air handling systems.

“My biggest concern was air quality,” Redemske said. He contacted a contractor who said that without the air-handling systems, carbon dioxide levels would build quickly. High School Principal Mary James said that 12 classrooms have no windows, so operating without lights was not an option. And Elementary Principal Dan Olberg said meeting the level compliance required by the Xcel contract almost completely shut down the school. “We were totally shut down in the elementary,” he said. “We were unplugging clocks, radios. We had nothing.”

Redemske said another factor was the increasingly uncomfortable conditions students would have faced inside the buildings. “Some areas of the buildings were quite hot later in the day and that was without 1,000 bodies generating even more heat,” he said.

To close the schools, Redemske turned to an emergency plan that involved notifying local and Twin Cities media outlets that the school was closing in an effort to alert parents. James sent 15 to 20 high school students to the elementary to help with calling parents and to escort neighbor children home. Olberg said the calling began with the parents of kindergarten students and progressed up to the families of older students. “We had just a ton of people down there working,” he said, noting that all families were able to be contacted, with the exception of one student whom Olberg drove home himself.

Redemske said the school district saves about $12,000 a year in Xcel’s energy savings program, which requires Maple Lake’s schools to reduce electricity consumption in high-demand situations on even-numbered days. But he said that schools on the odd-number schedule were also asked to reduce power usage on Monday, but were given an extra hour to comply.

In the history of Xcel’s contract with the school, the highest number of requests for power reductions was seven in 1999, but all occurred during the summer when school was not in session. This year, there was one power reduction request in August and the only other time students were sent home from school in such a situation was on September 6, 1990.

Redemske said Xcel calculated that the penalty for staying open would amount to about $4,600, a considerable amount for a school in the process of cutting its budget. And with similar conditions predicted for Tuesday, Redemske said school administrators had a contingency plan if a second day of power reductions was requested.  But it was a plan that wasn’t put into action as the school made it through another warm day with no Xcel request for a reduction in electrical usage.

James said that students were in school long enough on Monday to qualify as a school day and the district has more than enough student contact days built into its schedule so making up one lost day would not be necessary.

Redemske said that the closing of school was his decision and he would make himself available to discuss the concerns of families who were adversely affected by that decision.

“We had a contract and we intended to honor that contract,” he said. “Xcel is giving us a break on our rates and this is all we could do. But I want to thank Dan and Mary for all the work they did. It went extremely smoothly.”

Board chair Arnie Michalicek said there was considerable discussion about the Xcel contract when it was renewed in 2001 and he suggested putting it on the agenda for future discussions. In addition, Redemske said Xcel would be contacted and requested to send a representative to a board meeting.

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