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The television stations are calling for several inches of snow and strong winds during the 5:00 p.m. evening broadcast. The projected path of the low pressure system bringing the challenging snowy weather is headed just to the south and east of us and it will surely kick up those dreaded “lake-effect” snows. The students blow off their schoolwork because this storm will surely bring about a snow day; they stay up later than usual watching a television show that they normally don’t get to see. When they do go to bed they are anticipating the opportunity of sleeping in for a few extra hours…
It’s 6 a.m. and you’re watching the local news and Bellaire Public Schools isn’t one that is listed at the bottom of the television. Neighboring districts are listed yet Bellaire remains open…who had that bright idea? Well, the superintendent of schools makes that final determination but he receives help from many sources. What most people don’t realize is that on days when the weather is questionable, a tremendous amount of
activity begins just prior to 4:00 a.m. One of our bus drivers has the duty of driving the various bus routes to see what the road conditions are like: checking for drifting snow, slippery and/or icy roads and poor visibility. While inspecting the routes they are in contact with folks in the neighboring districts that have the same job that they have – checking how safe the roads are for the buses. Weather conditions across the Bellaire district can vary widely and it is important to check with our neighbors; after all, the roads to the east are most like those of Alba; those to the south and east are similar to Mancelona, and those to the north are most like Central Lake. Their input is imperative on those days of blustery weather.
In addition to having a district person check the roads and communication between schools, a few other options often used include: monitoring the weather radar on the computer, watching the weather channel, an occasional phone call to a meteorologist, and even phone calls to the local road commission may occur. Superintendents talk to one another as well. The reason this all begins so early is that we need to make a determination of whether to hold school or not prior to 5:30 a.m. Even that early is too late: TBAISD special education transportation begins their routes by 4:30 a.m. and they begin picking up students in our district prior to 6:00 a.m.
Once it is determined that school will be cancelled for the day there is still quite a bit of work to be done. The school contacts local television and radio stations, a phone tree of school employees begins and the Alert Now message system has to be activated with a cancellation message. What is amazing is that the system places almost 900 phone calls in less than 15 minutes and a detailed report is available for each number informing the superintendent to whether the call was a live answer, answering machine, no answer, or even a disconnected phone number.
Why don’t we have two-hour delays? A two-hour delay sounds like a good option until you start looking at it in greater detail. With an 8:00 a.m. start time, a two hour delay would have school beginning at 10:00 a.m.
Knowing that our buses begin their route a little more than an hour prior to the start time, we would have to have the buses on the road by 8:50. Drivers have a prerun procedure that they must do prior to starting each and every bus run means that they would have to be on site about 8:30 a.m. During truly bad winter days many of our roads do not get plowed until noon. A two-hour delay doesn’t do much good. Working parents also are put in a dilemma with delayed starts: do they leave their children home alone anticipating that the school will begin after the delay? While leaving that child home alone may be permissible for a small portion of the day, what happens if the weather doesn’t improve and the two-hour delay becomes a full-day off? This can be a very troubling decision. Superintendents will always err on the side of safety yet we know that we can’t close during every snowfall.
We do live in Northern Michigan and it is winter. If we closed every time that it snowed, we would be in school until July!
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