Lighting my High School: Dead Ballast!

Here's the Lighting in my Applied Math class (math in real-world situations, aka "math with a purpose" lol). This is one of the few rooms with a drop ceiling. Most have exposed ceilings but in some instances, the asbetos sound-absorbing padding was disturbed and a drop ceiling had to be added beneath it to trap any loose particles (so I was told).

Anyway, there are three rows of lights, each with two 8ft tandem units and one 4ft unit on the end. The row with the dead 8ft section is in the center of the room. The 4ft section behind it is the single fixture and the fixture in the top right corner of the pic is another 8ft tandem. This wing is the original wing of the school (from 1956) so the original lights were probably F40T12 (I don't know if 8ft lamps were out yet).

My teacher tried to get it fixed but he said the janitors changed the lamps and when it still didn't light they said "there's nothing we can do to fix it" so he left it at that. The school district's electrician has to come out and fix it (which will never happen)