The archaic Greeley West building is rearing its ugly head one more time and Spartan students are once again trying to overcome a difficult situation. This week’s drama consisted of the typical trash cans in the hallway after a spring snow combined with a power outage.

Electricity outages first started a couple of weeks ago. Earlier this year, Greeley West had a new breaker system installed as part of the construction project, as the new building would be on top of the older system.  Principal Mr. Jeff Cranson said the new breaker system is working too well and is shutting down each time it finds a weakness in the current electrical system.  These problems, he said, have probably always been there, but weren’t detected by the old breaker system.    The most recent shutdown came over the weekend and resulted in food spoiling and classes being moved online on Monday.  

The problem was compounded by the fact crews  couldn’t find where the shortage was coming from. “ The breaker system was saying that there was something wrong so we just shut down all the electricity,”  Cranson said. 

Cranson explained that workers spent Sunday trying to find the bad wiring but had no luck finding it. School was moved online so that officials could bring in a huge generator to temporarily power the building.  The generator is one of only two big enough to power a school the size of West in the western part of the United States. The generator was driven to Greeley from Salt Lake City.

Today, West has no power again as crews work to find the issues during the remote learning day.  Teachers were asked to work from home as a result. 

“There is a bad wire somewhere in this old building. What we were told is that the new breaker system is too smart for the school so we’ll put in the old breaker system so that it stops shutting down every time there is an outage,” Cranson continued. “This problem could be solved as soon as the wire outage is fixed.”

Keeping students in person is Cranson’s main goal. “We have great teachers so we need students in front of teachers because this is when students learn best,” Cranson said.