School closures in Mecklenburg, Gaston, and Lincoln counties after strong storms

CHARLOTTE, N.C. ( QUEEN CITY NEWS ) — There will be no school for students in Gaston County Schools again Friday, the district announced.

District leaders cited power and internet outages remaining from Wednesday’s storms at their schools and central department locations. There are also some road closures in the Stanley and Ranlo areas.

Like on Thursday, Friday will be an optional teacher workday.

CMS Thursday closures

Nearly a dozen Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools are closed Thursday due to power outages caused by severe weather that began Wednesday afternoon and continued through the night.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools that will be closed are the following:

• Albermarle Road ES
• Briarwood Academy
• Cochrane Collegiate
• Devonshire ES
• Garinger HS
• Harding HS
• Hidden Valley ES
• Independence High School
• Lincoln Heights Montessori
• Merry Oaks International Academy
• Montclaire ES
• Oaklawn Language Academy
• Paw Creek ES
• Phillip O. Berry HS
• Rocky River HS
• Steele Creek Elementary School
• Thomasboro Academy
• Villa Heights ES
• Westerly Hills ES
• Wilson MS

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools said the schools would be closed and there would be no remote learning. “There will be no ASEP, no extracurricular activities or sports. Any national or state testing that students were scheduled for today will be rescheduled. Teachers will have a remote workday,” CMS officials said.

In addition to those closures, North Brook Elementary and Union Elementary in Lincoln County will both be closed on Thursday due to the outages, the district announced Thursday morning. The district wants to specify that despite the district’s website listing all schools closed, only these two elementary schools are closed Thursday.

About 3,000 residents remained without power in Lincoln County Thursday morning while nearly 30,000 remained without power in Gaston County.

In addition to Lincoln County, all Gaston County Schools are closed Thursday after the county declared a state of emergency from the storms. One person was killed by a fallen tree and widespread outages remained Thursday morning.

Gaston County Schools said that end-of-year testing on Thursday would be postponed and that parents would receive a revised testing schedule.

More than 70,000 Duke Energy customers continued to remain without power in Mecklenburg and Gaston counties as of 6 a.m. Thursday.

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