Whitehaven High School is closed Thursday and Friday because an ongoing power outage is affecting critical systems across the campus, the school said. The shutdown means students in the Whitehaven community are facing a second straight day without class, with no in-person instruction expected to resume until next week.
According to Action News 5, the school will remain closed for the rest of the week, per the school’s chief of communications. The outlet reported that the outage is affecting critical systems across the campus, though the specific cause of this week’s disruption has not been detailed publicly.
Memphis Shelby County Schools said it will update families and staff as more information becomes available, the station reported. For now, families are left waiting on district communications while the campus works through whatever is keeping those critical systems offline.
A Substation Failure Hit the Neighborhood Before
This is not the first time power problems have rattled the Whitehaven area. More than 1,500 people in the neighborhood lost power on a Wednesday night after a substation went down, according to Memphis Light, Gas and Water, as reported by FOX13 Memphis. At the time, MLGW had not determined a cause for the substation’s failure, the station noted.
Whitehaven High School has also dealt with power trouble during high-stakes moments before. A power outage once interrupted TCAP testing at Whitehaven Schools, causing students to miss portions of the exam, per the same FOX13 Memphis report. That testing-day outage caused concern among some Whitehaven High students, teachers and even the teachers’ union, according to a separate WREG report.
Outages Have Repeatedly Disrupted MSCS Campuses
Power problems have been a recurring headache for Memphis-Shelby County Schools well beyond Whitehaven. During one earlier round of outages, the number of schools without power declined from 50 down to nine as restoration crews worked through the backlog, the district reported, as covered by Action News 5. Separately, Chalkbeat reported that 40 MSCS buildings remained without power at the end of that weekend, while WREG reported that 34 Memphis-Shelby County schools and five private schools were affected by the same storm-related outage — figures that reflect different counts rather than a single consistent tally.
WREG also reported that approximately 58,000 MLGW customers remained without power by late that Sunday evening, and that the utility said the vast majority of customers would have power restored by Thursday, while warning that those still without electricity should prepare for a multi-day outage. Accounts of which campuses stayed shut also varied: Action News 5 reported that MSCS campuses were closed that Monday because of the outages, while Chalkbeat reported that most students were expected to return to class Tuesday even as 18 campuses remained closed. Separately, the Daily Memphian reported that 10 MSCS schools closed on a Wednesday due to power outages, with district officials saying persistent outages were forcing some schools to stay shut.
No government, district, or utility source has yet detailed the cause, scope, or expected restoration timeline for this week’s outage at Whitehaven High School. Memphis-Shelby County Schools has said only that it will share more information with families and staff as it becomes available.
