Every school in Prince George's County Public Schools stayed closed Friday after overnight storms tore through the region, knocking down trees and power lines and cutting electricity to more than 28,000 customers across the county. The district declared a Code Green day, meaning students stayed home while most staff were still expected to report to work.
The storms moved through the D.C. region Thursday night, bringing heavy rain and strong winds that caused widespread damage and power outages, according to WJLA. The National Weather Service had issued a Severe Thunderstorm Watch for the Washington metropolitan area active through 2:00 a.m., warning of a line of storms sweeping northwest to southeast with damaging wind gusts, as reported by Capital Weather Gang. By Friday morning, Prince George's County led the state with 28,852 reported outages, or about 8.02% of all electricity customers in the county, according to PowerOutage.us.
Pepco, the utility responsible for restoration efforts, recorded 25,784 total customer outages across Maryland Friday, roughly 4.35% of its statewide customer base. A PGCPS spokesperson said several schools remained without power Friday morning, and that restoration crews were contending with downed wires and fallen trees, the district's report notes. Among the campuses still dark were Arrowhead Elementary, Benjamin Foulois Creative and Performing Arts Academy, Carmody Hills Elementary, Central High, Columbia Park Elementary, Cora Rice Elementary, District Heights Elementary, and Fairmont Heights High.
What a Code Green Day Means for Staff and Students
Under PGCPS emergency procedures, a Code Green designation closes schools to students while still requiring 12-month staff and administrators to report on time, subject to a liberal leave policy that was in effect Friday. The district's central school system offices remained open despite the closure. It's unclear from available reporting exactly when Pepco expects to restore power to the identified campuses still without electricity.
The disruption landed just over a week into the 2026–27 school year, which officially began August 25. PGCPS is Maryland's second-largest school system and the 18th-largest in the country, running 200 schools and centers for more than 133,000 students, so a single districtwide closure ripples across a huge swath of suburban Maryland households.
A Second Weather-Driven Disruption in Days
Friday's closure came just three days after Parkdale High dismissed students early when air conditioning failed in its 58-year-old building during a regional heat wave. That earlier incident, paired with Friday's storm-driven outages, points to a district juggling aging facilities and an unreliable grid within the same opening weeks of class.
Prince George's County elected officials and state consumer advocates had already pressed for formal state oversight of electric grid reliability and rate increases from Pepco and BGE earlier this year, according to the Maryland Office of People's Counsel. Maryland separately set aside a record $10.2 billion for K-12 education in its fiscal year 2027 budget under the Blueprint for Maryland's Future law, funding meant to strengthen district operations and infrastructure statewide.
Whether PGCPS will need to build make-up days into its calendar because of Friday's closure remains an open question. For now, families are watching for updates on when power returns to the eight affected campuses and whether classes resume as scheduled Monday.
