It's Never an Easy Decision! A Personal Perspective on Snow and Weather Cancellations at School

Any time we have a weather cancellation, there are questions about why we are doing it, observations about whether it's safe based on personal perspectives, excitement among some students about having a day off school and anxiety on the part of others because we are missing a day of school.  There are always a lot of considerations, balancing the relative safety of a weather situation against the scramble to secure child care by parents and the amount of time we have for learning objectives.  

The school does have some thresholds, based on similar practices at other private and public schools in Chicago, for handing the kind of weather situations we have in common. 

We will close school when the following conditions occur: 

• We receive advice from the Chicago Police Department, primarily from parents who are officers, that road conditions are bad, and the street department is having trouble keeping up with clearing snowfall from the streets. 
• The National Weather Service has issued a warning which indicates that travel conditions are dangerous and persist into the morning or afternoon commute times.  This would include blizzard conditions, along with freezing rain and sleet.  
• The issuance of temperature or wind chill warnings with sustained, actual temperature of forecast of -20 below zero or colder, or a sustained wind chill temperature of -25 or colder.  
• If water lines freeze in the school building, or heating units are not keeping the building warm, we will close until repairs are made, hopefully within 24 hours.   

The reason for closing during extremely frigid temperatures has to do with the fact that, while most of our students commute to school in their own family vehicles, and the building is warm and heated, we do have employees and a few students who depend on public transportation to get to and from school, and this is a risk to them.  There is also a risk factor involved any time someone is commuting in those kind of weather conditions.  We're weighing safety risks that are greatly increased against the necessity of spending the day in school.  There are also employees of the school who wind up having some duty responsibility that requires them to be exposed to the cold in order to make it safe for students when arriving and dismissing.  The rarity of such an occurrence warrants taking the precaution.  

The other reason for a frigid temperature closure is to take some of the pressure off first responders.  There is an increase of emergency calls during periods of extreme cold, or very bad weather.  Closing schools down reduces that risk.  It reduces the potential number of emergency calls.  And that's another reason why we do it.  

We are careful, in our scheduling, to make sure our students have enough time to adequately master their learning objectives.  Under Illinois' compulsory education requirements, students must spend 180 school days, the equivalent of 880 hours of instructional time, in school.  Our school day gives our students just over 1,000 hours of instructional time during the year, and our calendar has built-in days for use in the event of an extended weather event preventing us from attending school.  So when we need them, we take them.  

I've experienced some events as a school administrator that have taught me caution in dealing with bad weather.  At a previous school, one of our busses stalled on a rural road about six miles from the school campus when it was under 10 degrees outside.  Diesel fuel tends to gel when it gets cold, and the fuel line had jammed.  On another occasion, I had to stay at school until well past 6:00 p.m. one evening with students whose parents couldn't get to the school quickly, due to a heavy snow that had been falling since mid-afternoon.  Commutes that normally were made in 15 minutes were taking up to an hour, and two students couldn't get home, and wound up spending the night with a friend who lived close to the school.  I thought, for a little while, that we might have a situation like Lois Lenski's "Prairie School."  

We appreciate parents understanding the decisions necessary for the protection of the safety of all of our students and their families.