Pride of Robbins, IL.

Oof. Those things were the worst.

The building (or campus if you like) is federal government property and managed by the federal government.

Exactly. But they probably don't have on site engineers. Or if they do, they are unable or unwilling to do that. And there's no budget to just hire an electrician to come in and unfuck the system. Instead, they just let them run because that's someone else's budget.

Modern commercial lighting is installed with two connections: always on power, and then some kind of control. Either a data cable, or 0-10 volt wiring, or some kind of wireless thing. When the control method is not connected (or malfunctioning), the lights default to on for safety.

I'm sure there were switch modules in the classrooms, but when the controller software crashed, they lost their connection to the individual fixtures.

I'm not too familiar with lighting controls, but I seem to remember reading the documentation on one particular system which can be wired in a way so that if the controller disappears, the devices in each room will at least auto discover themselves and work independently. But it required a particular wiring topology, or maybe some kind of bridge device, that separated each space.

It is printed right on the devices.

It is likely there are very nice modules in each classroom that allow for that, as well as occupancy sensing and daylight dimming. But that all goes through a lighting controller that is apparently malfunctioning.

My alternate theory is that there is no lighting controller, and the switches just got "un paired" with the fixtures they are supposed to control, and nobody knows how to fix them.

They surely have breakers. But those are probably in a locked electrical room. And the maintenance people (if there are any) can't be bothered to turn them on and off every day.

That is how all large lighting systems work. The "switches" you see on the wall are just telling the lighting controller to turn the lights on.

It makes it more titillating.

It was weather:

> Satellite imagery later reviewed by the report’s authors showed strong cells associated with a storm system moving toward Hawaii that were near the flight path, according to the report.

What difference is 6 months going to make?

I am really curious why a six month delay would make any difference??

Or does this mean they just aren't done redacting them?

Children are not legally responsible for their parents' debts.

It depends on the deal, but buyouts are usually about cutting payroll, not cutting pensions. So instead of paying someone $1 million in pay over the next 10 years, they'll pay them $250k to stop working, and then contribute $100,000 to the pension fund to account for the loss in contributions that would have been made in the next 10 years. When the employee turns 65, they take their pension just as if they had worked those ten years. It's a win-win-win if a company has too much talent on the payroll for the expected workload over the next 10 years, and also has some excess revenue they want to try to write off. And the employee gets a semi-funded early retirement.

I can't speak for all pensions, but the ones I am familiar with are simple annuity types of things. For every year you work, an amount of money is put into the fund. That money is invested so that on the other end, when you retire, there is enough money to pay out what they promised you. There's no real trickery involved, it's just actuarial math.