Moore schools work to recover from fire

By Gan Matthews, NEWS 9

MOORE, Okla. - An electrical failure at a school administration building in Moore has scattered 130 employees across the district.

The building, that caught on fire Tuesday, is currently locked, without power and has a sign on the door to notify people about where employees have moved.

Many of the employees are working in the technology center next door to the administration building.

"It's a major situation when you try to relocate that many people, and when you have your main communications for the school district knocked out for a few days at the opening of school. It was a major inconvenience," said Jeff Horn, the Assistant Director of Operations.

Students at the new South Moore high school may not have noticed the loss of computer operations, but teachers and administrators did.

"We had no internet. We had no email. We had no infinite campus, which is our student attendance program, so basically, technologically, it shut us down," South Moore Principal Roy Smith said.

Teachers had to take roll and record grades the old fashioned way, by hand, on paper. Some did better than others.

"One of my colleagues joked about how she had actually never kept a grade book that wasn't on computer and I had. It made me feel a little old," said Lana Echard, a South Moore teacher.

Thursday morning, most of the computer network was up and running again.

To keep it running, the district has to keep the servers on the second floor of the administration building cool, which means a generator has to run throughout the day.

The Moore District will have a new electrical line connected soon, so the generator can be turned off.

Moore officials had relocation plans for students at all the schools, but none for the administration building. They are expected to create a plan in case of future incidents.