A power outage impacting thousands of homes and businesses in Austintown has forced public schools to cancel classes on Friday.

School officials tell 21 News that all Austintown Local School buildings are closed.

Power went out to more than 5,500 FirstEnergy customers in Austintown and Youngstown shortly before 4 a.m.

FirstEnergy reported 3,300 outages still remained at 7:30 a.m.

Utility crews blame the outage on a failed insulator and expect to have power restored by 9 a.m.