Wednesday, February 7, 2007

When do the schools close due to bad weather?

Many have commented on this very question this week. Evansville School District finally decided to close school Monday because the buses would not start according to Supt. Carvin. The issue many people have is what would have happened if the buses would have started? School would have been held?

First of all the bus company said they can always get the buses going but, it was too cold to have the kids out. Parents and others said it was too cold to have kids out waiting for a bus and for kids to be walking to school. The Supt. of schools says they use a windchill thing and how many minutes you should be out. Well let me tell you some kids are out longer than this 10 minute thing Supt. Carvin talks about. Some kids walk for 20 minutes. They don't have buses to ride.

I think the School Board should take a look at this policy. Common sense goes a long way here I think, and it was not used in this case. The parents also had a problem about how long it took for our district to call school off. They would like to have more notice so they can arrange for daycare. I don't blame them in this case. There was at least 30 schools that already said on Sunday that schools were closed. Our Supt. Carvin did not make the call until after 5am Monday morning. That is just not right.

Now the kicker is that this day that was missed will have to be made up. What ever happened to having 3 or 4 days built into the school year for bad weather days? Ya know, the teachers have all kinds of "Staff Developement Days" and those are built in. What do you think??

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad somebody agrees with me, there wasn't much discussion about it on the observer when I commented there.

"Wait.... so we have to reach the point where "wind chill temperatures are expected to be hazardous to life within several minutes" to merit school being closed?

This does not seem right. Many students walk to school, and it takes more than "several minutes" to walk to school.

Also, think about the families who have troubles affording adequate clothing for their children to stay warm.

This policy really needs to be rethinked, unless the school system wants to be hit with a lawsuit next time because a student became frostbit from walking to school."