Students at West Junior High School got an added twist to their first full day of school Thursday: no electricity for nearly two and a half hours.

“It makes for an interesting first day,” said West Principal Myron Melton.

6News video: West Junior High loses power

At 10:10 a.m., Westar Energy shut off electricity at the junior high, 2700 Harvard Road, and the neighborhood around the school, school officials said. By 12:30 p.m., power had returned. Westar spokeswoman Karla Olsen said 475 customers had a temporary outage.

The electricity was shut off, Olsen said, because a work crew had to remove tree branches that fell onto a power line.

Without electricity there was no air conditioning. On a typical August day, that would have been trouble. But because of unseasonably cool temperatures, administrators didn’t have to take the time to consider letting school out early.

“If we had the typical 100-degree temperature, this would be a whole different situation,” Melton said.

Classes continued as normally as possible during the unexpected outage. Because it was the first full day of class for students, most teachers were providing class outlines and expectations, Melton said.

The outage mainly inconvenienced staff members who were working on computers. But it also caused a change in lunch plans. Instead of hot lunches, students were offered sandwiches.