I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you a little about the processes we go through when it comes to making decisions to close school due to inclement weather. We have missed more school this year than we have in a long time, mainly due to the ice storm. So far we have missed eight days. We had three days designated as possible weather make-up days within our original school calendar, and the rest of our make-up days were set at the end of the year. Normally these days are sufficient to help us deal with lost time. All of these dates are labeled on our calendars in the beginning of the year so people can plan around them and we traditionally do not change these during the year.
Making the decision comes down to whether or not it is safe to have our buses, teen drivers, families, and our staff on the roads. Although we agonize over the decisions because we know that they can disrupt family routines and cause people to miss work, we must do what is safe for our kids. Having said that, no matter what decision we make there are always folks who do not agree with it and don’t hesitate to make their disapproval known.
This time of year people often ask questions about what factors we consider in making our decision. When the weather is bad, we send out a crew around 2:30 a.m. to check the roads all over the county. We have to make the decision by 5 a.m. so that if we are going, we can get our buses out to pick our kids up on time. We have to decide based upon the conditions at that time along with the information provided to us from the weather services. So, at 7 a.m. the decision may not make sense because conditions change. For example, this year we had a situation where the roads were dangerous at 5 a.m. but had cleared up by 7:30 a.m. We had considered a one- or two-hour delay that day, but at that point, weather forecasters were still predicting that the ice storm could hit mid afternoon. Our fear was that we would be in a position of going in late only to then turn around and have to dismiss early. I wish this was an exact science but it is not.
Take for example, the day we dismissed early. We were being told by the weather services not to dismiss too early because we would put the kids out there in the worst part of the storm. They told us if we waited it out the roads would clear off and it would be safer. However, there was another storm coming in later and the roads were getting covered fast. We decided to dismiss an hour early based on the information we had, with the goal of getting our kids home in between the two blasts. (On days when we have to dismiss early, our elementary staff members call every family before we release any kids to go home early.)
It seems in the last few weeks we’ve faced a myriad of possible weather emergencies. We recently had a tornado watch in our area and had to hold our kids in our buildings until the storms passed. We were lucky that our early routes were completed before this happened, but we did have to hold our second and third routes that day for about 30 minutes. We realize that this created an inconvenience for some families but we had to do this to keep our kids safe. We even had one day where the temperatures were down in the negative teens. We were concerned for our kids who might have to wait at bus stops or walk to school. Many families in our community are just not used to these types of frigid temperatures the way that folks are up north and are not prepared to send kids safely out in these conditions. One late bus could have caused a serious problem for our students not dressed appropriately for the weather. Our decision was affirmed when we saw that every surrounding school district in Central Kentucky was also closed that day.
Every year we hear from people who have moved here from up north who think we are pretty crazy for closing the schools when we do. We try to explain that although our road crews do a great job on our priority roads, they cannot clear all the roads where our buses have to travel. In cities up north, all the roads get cleared so they rarely miss school. (Also, most schools up north do not finish until the middle or end of June. They can also start later in the summer because they do not have to deal with these weather issues.) We have to make a decision based on the worst road conditions in our county. The weather patterns in our community often seem to create very different conditions in different parts of the county. While roads in south Lexington may be clear, drivers in our rural areas or north Lexington may be fishtailing.
We’ve also gotten lots of inquiries about whether or not we will be waiving make-up days. The current law does not allow for a waiver for disaster days until at least 20 days of school have been missed. Again, we have missed 8 days thus far and do not anticipate waiving any of the make-up days at this time.
No matter what decision we make, there are people who would have decided differently based upon their own circumstances and the information they have at the time. We will continue to do our very best to make the right decisions but please know that if we are going to make a mistake we will err on the side of safety. Going to school in June while it is safe is much better than taking a chance with the lives of our kids.
