Moving approximately 1,400 students out of school before the day’s first bell and vanloads of food to feed them isn’t something public school officials want to do each day.

But Thursday morning’s temporary transfer of pupils to Vicksburg and Warren Central high schools from the respective junior high feeder schools was a success amid concern already high due to the season’s coldest weather, Vicksburg Warren School District officials contend.

A power outage caused when a train struck a power line along Baldwin Ferry Road near both junior high schools went unreported to school district officials in the wee hours of Thursday morning.

“I do a 5 a.m. check for roads,” Superintendent Chad Shealy said. After that a scout team assesses the conditions of the schools. It was during that assessment that the power outage was discovered.

Power to 235 Entergy customers nearest the incident, including both junior high schools, was restored just before 9 a.m. It prompted officials to move the entire student body to the high schools in order to eat lunch.

“We didn’t have power by 8 a.m. and we weren’t sure when it would come back. So, we had to pull the trigger,” Shealy said late Thursday morning as students sat down to eat lunch in a different environment than usual a few miles away.

A check of the junior high’s plumbing turned up a frozen water faucet, Shealy said.

Moving the students to the high schools and feeding them breakfast and lunch was a massive logistical undertaking.

“It was an eclectic approach — I think I made 62 phone calls.”

It meant packing up enough food for two meals for 1,400 students onto vans and taking it across town to the high schools — an unprecedented move, according to the district’s longtime nutritionist, Gail Kavanaugh.

“I don’t think we’ve had to transport and ship food like this before,” Kavanaugh said, adding “grab and go” meals of sandwiches, fruit and juice were loaded onto a van that returned the same time the students did after lunch. “We had to think pretty quickly, but we have well-trained staff of eight or nine people at each school who took food temperatures and helped make sure the children were where they needed to be.”

Shealy and Kavanaugh credited support staff for the unusual transition.

“I can’t brag enough about the workers,” Kavanaugh said. “You couldn’t have predicted what happened. But, I guess it can happen when it’s 80 degrees, too.”

Classes resumed Friday in the approximately 8,500-student district amid this winter’s coldest temperatures. Friday’s highs were expected to approach 40 after rebounding from lows near 24 overnight. Thursday’s low temperature of 15 degrees tied a local daily record set just last year, according to the National Weather Service.

Emergency officials with Warren County assured Shealy the rest of the week’s classes were in the clear as far as weather is concerned. “They don’t see any predictive-type measures needed today.”