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Remember that Mass. school with all the lights on? They’re turning them off, finally
The lights have been stuck on at Minnechaug Regional High School in Wilbraham since August 2021.
After about a year and a half, the lights at a Massachusetts high school will finally be turned off.
This week, workers are at Minnechaug Regional High School in Wilbraham to fix the long-broken lighting system, 22News WWLP reported. The work is ongoing, and some of the lights remain on.
Minnechaug’s February break runs from Feb. 20 through Feb. 24., according to the school district’s calendar.
“Very glad it’s done. It was an embarrassment. It’s unfortunate that we can’t seek relief from the contractor, however, it’s an issue that’s done now,” Wilbraham resident Glen Clark told 22News.
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The lighting system initially failed in August 2021. As a safety measure, when this occurs, the system defaults to turning all the school’s lights on, according to an August 2022 letter written by Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District officials to Wilbraham’s Board of Selectmen.
“There is no manageable means of overriding this without taking other essential systems offline as well,” they wrote.
Officials discovered that the company that first installed the lighting software had been sold multiple times in the years since, according to the letter. Even once officials found the new parent company, it took weeks to identify a person within the company that was familiar with the system.
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School leaders worked with a software consultant to see if it was possible to patch the system and override the “always on” default to no avail.
They eventually landed on “piecemeal” solution that would replace the existing server, lighting control boards, and some hardware, according to the letter.
The necessary equipment was ordered in November 2021. The main server arrived on schedule the following March, but the remaining equipment was backordered multiple times, according to the letter.
School officials did what they could to mitigate the problem.
“So, for now, the lights are stuck on and while it incurs some degree of added cost, the lights all utilize highly efficient fluorescent and LED bulbs, we shut off a number of breakers daily for exterior lights, and have manually removed many bulbs and fixtures from classrooms,” they wrote.
The repairs are expected to cost between $75,000 and $80,000, 22News reported.
While the issue has been ongoing for more than a year, it only recently captured national attention. The writers at “Saturday Night Live” even threw a joke about the school into a “Weekend Update” segment last month.
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