Upper Arlington families will wait five more days for the school year to begin after the district issued a second schedule revision Aug. 12, citing storm damage to buildings, ongoing power outages and the need to give families time to recover.
The new start dates, reported by NBC4, supersede the interim schedule the district announced Tuesday:
- Monday, Aug. 17 — First day for grades 1-5, 6 and 9, plus kindergarten orientation for students originally scheduled to attend Aug. 12
- Tuesday, Aug. 18 — All grades 1-12 in session, plus kindergarten orientation for students originally scheduled to attend Aug. 13
- Wednesday, Aug. 19 — All K-12 students in session
Burbank Early Childhood School is the lone exception. It will open as originally scheduled on Aug. 17.
The announcement marks the second time in two days that Superintendent Dr. Robert Hunt's district has rewritten its opening-week calendar. An initial revision Tuesday had grades returning as early as Aug. 13, contingent on power being restored. That plan lasted less than 24 hours.
Upper Arlington Schools said it consulted with the City of Upper Arlington on neighborhood conditions before making the call. The district said it is still waiting for power to be restored at its buildings and acknowledged that a large number of families are dealing with damaged homes and outages.
The storms that struck central Ohio on the evening of Aug. 10 and Aug. 11 produced an 82 mph wind gust at John Glenn Columbus International Airport, according to WOSU. In Upper Arlington, police and fire crews responded to roughly 225 calls for service Tuesday, and trees fell on at least 10 homes along Wellesley Drive, ABC6 reported. That street sits a block from Upper Arlington High School.
"It's absolute devastation that the winds came this direction," Wellesley Drive resident Stephen Bell told ABC6 on Tuesday. "The backyard however has been totally wiped out. There's a shed which is now adorning my neighbor's yard."
As of Wednesday morning, AEP Ohio reported more than 81,000 customers still without power across roughly 1,700 outages, with Franklin County accounting for about 61,500 of those, NBC4 reported. The utility deployed approximately 3,700 crew members and said full restoration across its service area could take until Aug. 14. Hospitals and urgent care facilities will be prioritized before residential customers.
As we reported Wednesday, the city opened cooling and charging stations at Bob Crane Community Center, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Upper Arlington Public Library branches and Northwest United Methodist Church.
Streets near the high school, including Halstead Road, Pickwick Drive and Wellesley Drive, remained restricted to local traffic only Wednesday to allow crews to clear downed trees and debris, according to the city's alert center.
The district has not announced when it will next communicate with families but said parents should monitor uaschools.org. AEP Ohio's outage map at outagemap.aepohio.com offers neighborhood-level restoration estimates.
