Living in California, I am no stranger to the yearly fires that plague our state like some sort of seasonal disease, nor am I unacquainted with the almost daily earthquakes that most Californians are so used to that they can’t even feel. However, power outages? That’s news to me. 

Recently, the power company PG&E has been shutting off power in droves all over the Bay Area, to absolutely no one’s pleasure. Due to the “strong winds” posing a fire hazard, it does make a fair bit of sense to eliminate as many possible fire hazards as possible. On Sunday of last week, I awoke to a news report of all the power outages occurring in my area, and saw a steady stream of school districts that would be closed due to them. Almost on cue, my mom got an automated message from the school. 

“School will still be in session tomorrow.”

I pondered this for a while. Usually, if the power does go out in my area, its only for a few hours, and very rarely affects my highschool. In fact, I’d never seen one at my school during my three years of attending it. I assumed that it would probably be on the next day. Oh how wrong I was.

Attending a school with no lights is a surreal experience, and puts you in a sort of alternate reality. All of the lights were off, the hallways black, as they don’t have windows. Teachers who have never touched their ever closed blinds were forced to finally raise the dusty fabric. 

Admittedly, this doesn’t seem like much of a problem. 

“So what?”  I hear you thinking “It’s a little dark, get over it.”

And get over it I might, if not for the fact that the teachers at my school primarily use electronics to teach. Chromebooks, computer labs, projectors, and even the school wifi was inaccessible. The teachers were floored. For years, the district has been telling them to integrate technology into every lesson plan they create, and now they are unable to use it? When I tell you that we did nothing that day, I mean we did nothing. Every class was meaningless. Teachers and students alike complained about the lack of power, whether it be for environmental discomfort or the fact that they couldn’t properly do their jobs. However, the lack of anything to teach was just the tip of the iceberg for the problems we encountered during the two days with no power our school experienced. Hallways were so dark, students were tripping over each other, and teachers were forced to sit outside with dimly lit lanterns to attempt to light the way. At least, however, the hallways had some light from the two glass doors at either end. The bathrooms were another story. Imagine your room, perhaps, with no lights on and blinds closed. And then imagine that there are no windows at all, and the door is closed, and there are stalls and sinks and towel dispensers that you have to navigate like some sort of low budget horror maze. That brings you close to the bathroom situation. (However, I can’t complain too much. I got to chat with our school registrar who was apathetically playing cards on a little table in front of the restroom, forced to be its guardian). My school is two stories, so kids in wheelchairs or on crutches use the elevators to get from class to class. I’m pretty sure no one has a schedule all on one floor. Except, the elevators weren’t working. I saw kids with broken legs trying to climb the stairs with help from their friends, almost falling multiple times. I’m pretty sure by the second day, kids using wheelchairs stayed home altogether (although, I can tell you, probably a quarter of the student body stayed home on day two). It is at this time that I’d like to address the main issue with the power outage, that most students had figured out in their inky classrooms by day two. Surely, with the lack of education occurring, and all the safety hazards posed, this couldn’t be legal?

And they were right.

You see, with all of these obvious safety issues, there was one that was literally looming over our heads. The fire sprinklers. If there was a fire, the alarm system wouldn’t go off, and neither would the sprinklers. Furthermore, our intercom system was completely offline. If there was a fire, no one would have known until either the flames or smoke were powerful enough to seep into closed classrooms, and at that point it would have been too late. 

“Ok, but schools don’t usually have fires, even in California!” 

Oh, but Thursday of that same week, we did. Our school had a real fire, that had to employ the intercom and fire alarm system to get us out of the buildings fast enough. How is it that our district allowed our school to continue, when glaringly obvious safety hazards littered every inch of our highschool campus? There’s one answer.

Money.

In California, our schools are funded by the amount of students who attend each day. One extra day off means that all the money that could have been earned that day is gone. Essentially, our schools are a business, and we are the commodity. At what point did it become okay for districts to compromise over 1,500 students’ lives for a couple thousand dollars. At what point do we, the students, draw the line? How long before something like this happens again, and people actually get hurt? Alarmingly, I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, and neither do the people in charge, apparently. Our school districts say they care for us students, but it is at times such as these that I question whether to them we are considered people or numbers.