For the past week, Coppell residents have been living with inconsistent power outages due to freezing temperatures. The Coppell High School administrative team is working to provide support to teachers and students to the best of their ability. 

A few members of the administration, including assistant principal Chris Gollner and associate principal Melissa Arnold, are experiencing minimal power outages. Gollner and Arnold have been able to carry on with their duties from home, with the help of technology.

“The storm kept us from being able to help and support from the [campus] building,” Arnold said. “However, with the ability to text and email and call, it hasn’t stopped me from doing my job, beyond not being able to help people face to face.”

The administration’s main focus is helping students and faculty during this time. In this vein, progress report grading deadlines have been moved from Thursday to next week to accommodate teachers lacking power and internet access.

“One of the things we did right away was telling our teachers that [progress reports] take second place to everything else in their lives right now,” Arnold said. “We’ve been very clear to them that our priority is their safety and the kids’ safety and to make sure everybody is taken care of. We’ll worry about all the other stuff next week when life gets back to what it’s supposed to be.”

As of today, schools are scheduled to reopen Monday. While the district has a bad weather day in April to help accommodate for the week-long closure, the rest of the days will have to be waived by the Texas Education Agency (TEA), which Coppell ISD has yet to apply for.

In addition to power outages, Coppell families have been dealing with other issues caused by the freezing temperatures.

“We have a little bit of water damage,” Gollner said. “Ice trapped the water on the roof and the water started melting underneath and seeping through the roof to the house.”

Still, Gollner expresses gratitude and acknowledges the severity of the situation for others.

“We’ve been truly lucky and blessed in this situation, but there are a lot of people who have not been,” Gollner said. “I know some of our teachers got hit pretty hard and there’s some busted pipes. There are thousands upon thousands of dollars that are going to be lost when people have to fix pipes or drywall or whatever is needed.”

Beyond the administration, Gollner recognizes other Coppell residents have been assisting those affected by the power outages.

“People are delivering food and hot drinks to each other and to the warming stations,” Gollner said. “They’re offering up their homes and their houses. Looking at the Coppell community as a whole, it’s pretty impressive how people rallied around each other.”

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