WILBRAHAM, Mass. - Superintendent John Provost and his staff want Wilbraham residents to know that school district officials will be more equipped to handle technical issues with Minnechaug Regional High School's lights moving forward.


What You Need To Know

  • Minnechaug Regional High School's lighting system had a malfunction where the lights would not shut off for nearly two years going back to summer of 2021

  • The new lighting system the school installed this past winter comes with more safety precautions, along with some school staff now being trained to operate it

  • The state inspector general's office cited concerns in a recent letter, stating the technology mgiht not be the safest option

  • The total costs of repairs were around $150,000 

Because of a software issue, the lights at the school were stuck on for about a year and a half starting in August of 2021.

The issue was even cited in a recent letter from the inspector general’s office.

Assistant Superintendent Aaron Osborne said the new lighting system the school installed this past winter does come with more safety precautions.

"Our new system has a manual off switch," Osborne said. "There also was a lack of control at our level of the server. We do have more control now of that server at the district level. So if there were a situation where the system went into a default again, we would have more control to turn the lights on and off manually, or to override controls through the server."

The issue started in the summer of 2021 when the digital software for the system failed, resulting in the lights being on all the time.

"We were back and forth on a few different fixes to the system," he said. "One fix was initially to rip out the entire system and entirely replace it which was going to be in the ballpark of $1.5 million dollars, and we realized that wasn't immediately tenable. We looked at other solutions..."

The school chose to instead replace the server and the lighting panels, which Osborne said cost between $60,000-$70,000.

But supply chain issues delayed the process.

"We, initially, had a couple months as a window for delivery that bloomed into a full year of delivery delays."

Osborne said the total costs of repairs were around $150,000.

The school was build in 2012.

While Osborne said the school does have some personnel trained on how to use the new system, the lifespan of the digital light system will have to be considered moving forward.

"We need to recognize that probably in less than 10 years," he said. "We're going to probably have to do the same thing again, so the lifespan of a server and the associated panels that are driven by chip sats are going to reach end of life in 10 years or less."