WASHINGTON TWP., Montgomery County — Spring Valley Academy students are back in school after getting hit with a double whammy.

An electrical fire on Sept. 8 in the school's utility room closed the school. Then the Sept. 14 windstorm from Hurricane Ike shut down electrical power to most area schools.

The school's plan to have students start back to school Sept. 15 at the Kettering Seventh-day Adventist Church and in six classrooms in the nearby Kettering College of Medical Arts facility was foiled by Sunday's windstorm. The school was all set to go Monday, but almost all the school's faculty and students lost electrical power because of the storm, said Jeff Bovee, principal of Spring Valley Academy.

They had no way of e-mailing students and parents any information, Bovee said.

"Our families all know we follow Centerville (as far as school closings)," he said, so when Centerville schools closed Monday and Tuesday, Sept. 15 and 16, "we didn't want to confuse parents."

Centerville provides transportation for many of Spring Valley Academy's students, he said.

By Tuesday, SVA set up an auto dialer to let parents know what was planned, he said. Bovee, who lives in Springboro, said power returned to his home late Tuesday night. Some of his staff still do not have power, he said.

Most Centerville students were on a two-hour delay Wednesday, so SVA started at their alternative locations Wednesday, Sept. 17 on the same two-hour delay, he said. Today, Thursday, Sept. 18, all but one Centerville City school was open, so SVA students started at 8:30 a.m., Bovee said.

They plan to move to their long-term solution site, the Ridgeville Christian School at 946 E. Lower Springboro Road and Ohio 48 in Clearcreek Twp., Sept. 29, Bovee said.

Centerville and Springboro school buses will deliver students to the site and West Carrollton and Kettering school buses will arrange for a drop-off at the Spring Valley Academy and the school will arrange for transportation to the new site, he said.

As of today, "school is up and running and things are going great," Bovee said. Students are brown bagging their lunch. Next Tuesday a group of youths from the Mt. Vernon Academy will be coming with the youth director for the Ohio Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and will be buying pizza for all 293 students at SVA, Bovee said. Today the Kettering College of Medical Arts is taking our seniors out for pizza, he said.

The majority of students showed up today, he said. Since some of the schools that provide transportation were still closed Wednesday, some students still didn't have transportation yesterday, he said.

Now he said, "the students are happy, the teachers are happy, and I think many of the parents are also happy. We have amazing teachers and staff and willing and patient parents," he said.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2341 or kullmer@DaytonDailyNews.com.