The ripple effects of the Texas power outage

Last Sunday night the storm came early. Sunday nights at Coding with Kids are usually the calm before the storm of Monday classes but last week, it came early. As snow and ice blanketed a large portion of the country, we started to get dozens of calls from instructors without power. As the details of the outages began to come out on national news, it soon became clear that a fun snow day was quickly becoming a dangerous situation for many of our students and instructors.

While many of us watched the situation on TV, our operations manager, Eric, was right in the thick of it in Austin. He and his young family spent several days without power, heating, and clean water. Ever committed to supporting his team, he charged his phone from his car to fill substitute requests in between trips outside to collect snow to melt for clean water.

But as an international organization, we had to adapt and adapt quickly, to keep classes running smoothly and find creative solutions for the dozens of camps and classes that were suddenly without instructors. Our team went into overdrive on Monday morning to keep classes running for as many students as possible, and to make sure all parents were contacted and knew what was happening. It was incredible to see instructors from around the world step up to take on classes for those in the dark.

I want to thank our team for having done an amazing job. We hope that those who ended up impacted outside of Texas will understand and those families like Eric’s, that were directly affected, are able to get back to normal soon with power and clean water. We are already making sure that any student who wasn’t able to attend, or that we had to reschedule, can jump right back into class this week.

Last week’s emergency caught many of us off guard, whether we were directly impacted by outages or dealing with the fall out. But this week we are looking forward to how we can support our students and instructors as they come back online. In case you were wondering, we have also added “reviewing national weather events” to our weekly routine. I hope you and your families are staying safe and warm!

Warm regards,
Marek Brejl

Originally published to Coding with Kids blog.