I don’t think so but the superintendent of schools can never make everybody happy with this decision, and I’m wondering what people are going to be saying at dismissal time.
Should school have been closed today?
by Nathan Phillips | Feb 13, 2014 | Newton | 40 comments
Of course he should have closed school today. There was a Winter Storm Warning in effect AND it had already started snowing by the time school started this morning. The safety of students must come first. That wasn’t the case today.
I agree with Mike.
The school calendar has a lot of flexibility to it and administration should always err to the side of caution.
No, kids should be in SCHOOL! I am sorry, the parents can KEEP the child home if the parent wants, but kids should be in school. It was NOT slipperty getting to school, and frankly kids can get home from school. Plus it SHOULD change to rain.
Mike and Terry . . . . . . why err on caution? New England has had school for hundreds of years!
Certainly there was no significant obstacle to getting to school this morning. If the weather plays out as predicted it doesn’t sound like it should be much of a problem at release time … though of course that could change.
I don’t expect or want the schools to be closed for every run-of-the-mill winter snow. Drawing the line and making the call on how much is too much will always be a tough job. Today I was quite happy to send my daughter off to school, even if she wasn’t.
Jerry,
I totally agree with you!
Newton Mom– There is no relevance in saying “New England has had school for hundreds of years.” And I strongly disagree with your assessment that it was not slippery. I was driving this morning. I found it very slippery. And I drive a military grade SUV. Slippery roads pose the greatest danger, more so than accumulated snow. The likelihood of an accident is at its highest when the roads are slippery, drivers are having a hard time controlling their vehicles, and then we put 14,000 human bowling pins out there for them to hit. All it takes is one stupid accident. That’s why you err on the side of caution. Just my opinion though.
I was driving my mini van at 7:30 AM and again at 9 AM on Route 9 . . . taking it slowly (but not too slowly) and not to quickly. I don’t have AWD, and I was fine. . . . .
In a past storm this year, I was on Route 9 and saw accidents resulting in people driving too fast.
We just received an urgent email from the Countryside After School program saying that the after care program has been cancelled today and that “all school buildings will be closed at 3 PM today”.
NewtonMom:
“Newton has had school for hundreds of years.”
Yes, but in the last few decades the number of vehicles on the roads has more than doubled, creating gridlock at the slightest blip. Without the school traffic, the burden on everyone is reduced considerably-This isn’t only about the school kids.
With the flexible calendar, there’s no need to roll the dice when the weather is likely to be bad. They can get to school, can they get home? Will it change to rain? Who knows? Why play that game?
“Kids should be in SCHOOL!”
Home isn’t such a bad place either. Maybe a little more home time/down time isn’t so bad for the kids of 2014.
Rarely does the Superintendent get to play the school closure game with certainty. If he’s forced to guess with the weather forecasters, I believe he loses nothing by taking the conservative view.
Uh, you know, kids used to walk to school. Yes, even in snowstorms.
There’s been no declared snow emergency so far. We can’t cancel school for every snowstorm. Newton seems to have made the right call.
Last night, I sat through a PTO meeting where one parent was clearly only concerned about how she was going to drop her kids off in the blue zone and how securely they were going to be locked up while in school. That sort of logic seems to be running school operations lately.
What Flexible calendar?????
There are 180 school days. . . . and barely 9 weeks of summer vacation.
We are raising kids to call in for weather???? Nurses and Doctors go to work in all sorts of weather. Target workers are expected to be at their jobs without their children. Get to school late. . . . I am fine with that, but I am teaching my kids that a smaller scale snow storm means you use common sense . . . leave enough time. . . . . but get your commitments done. Figure out what commitments can wait until the next day. But three inches of snow, doesn’t mean cancel and camp out all day.
Are the malls open? Yup.
Are the movies open?
Is everything BUT the schools open? Yes
Then the kids should be in school. If kids and parents can get to the mall, they can get to school. The entire Newton is NOT closing due to three inches of snow. Newton Wellesley is open, my dentist was open.
Okay, I take back what I said about the snow emergency (declared by @newtonpolice via Twitter for 3pm) That leaves the timing awful tight, but we all know the forecasting is guesswork.
And if schools had been closed today, many of the same people would be complaining that they shouldn’t have been.
BTW, cancelling after school is fine. . . . for me it is GO TO school, and then come home. Cancel after school activities!
Not me, mgwa. I’m very consistent on this point. If the roads are too slippery to assure that drivers are able to maintain full control of their vehicles, I believe schools should be closed. Today in particular, the National Weather Service had issued a “Winter Storm Warning,” and that storm had already started when kids went off to school. Safety first!
Like Gail pointed out…you can never please everyone!
Just my humble opinion but as parents YOU have the right to decide if you want your kids to go to school on days like today. If you think it’s too dangerous, keep them home. Simple.
TWT – lots of teachers had tests today – I could not have kept my kids home if I wanted to because they would not want to have to make that up etc.
The Superintendent should have cancelled school. It took me over 1.5 hours to go from my house to the Middle School and then the High School and get home. The roads are AWFUL and they knew the height of the storm was going to be around this time – BAD call by the Superintendent and the Mayor. Saw Many Plow trucks with their plow up and not cleaning the streets. Hopefully everyone will get home safely.
Tough call. My wife’s school announced early dismissal this morning due to the forecast for the regular closing time. She left before noon, and said the main streets were okay but the side streets coming through Waltham and Newton were terrible. And she still got stuck in our driveway because it was snowing so hard.
Not really a “tough call,” Ted. Just a foolish call. I know others disagree, and they have a right to. But I think it’s just crazy to put kids lives at risk on a day like this.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t…
I had four kids in my house by 3:30 or so. The middle schooler walked home without issue, the high schooler took a city bus and I drove up to the elementary school to pick up two other (only three of the four are mine).
I can’t say it was great moving around, but I can’t say it was terrible either. It would have been nice if the schools put some effort into cleaning the walkways in front, but we’re all pretty hardy and managed to survive it all.
Keeping schools open was the right move. Parents who wanted to pick their kids up early did so. The after school program closed, and I wish it had stayed open, but I can live with that too.
Well, Mike, at least we are somewhat used to snow. Unlike Raleigh, NC.
@Joanne,
Like Gail said, you can’t please everyone. I’m not advocating for either side. I’m simply saying that in this case, if you felt like it was too bad out for your kids to get back and forth to school, you could have chosen to keep them home. I understand about tests and projects but the reality is that these can be made up if they are missed.
Nobody will ever be happy with the decisions the Superintendent makes. The last expected storm, school was closed and we got very little snow. Everyone said school should have been open. Today, we got lots of snow and some people think school should have been closed. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Every time we have a storm, this topic rears it’s ugly head. You know what “they” say…This is New England, if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute!
@Whole Truth– I think this issue repeats itself because the standard for closing remains subjective [and a bit of a mystery], rather than clearly articulated so that it’s consistent. I know every storm is different. But the conditions that lead to a closing should be more clearly defined. I believe the standard should be… If the roads are too slippery for drivers to fully control their vehicles, or if visibility is impaired in a significant way, school is closed. Those things put students who are walking or waiting for a bus at risk, so that’s where I’d draw the line.
So Mike (welcome back) you’re saying that any NWS Winter Storm Warning should automatically cancel school? That would certainly be consistent, but I wonder if it’s oversimplifying things a bit.
Like Chuck, we survived the day. Dismissal traffic at our elementary school was no more chaotic than usual (granted, that may not be saying much). We walked home without incident and took another kid home to be picked up later by her parent. My middle schooler had to wait a bit for the public bus but also got home safely.
Mike, of course your definition does not include conditions for staff who may have to commute a great distance to or from school, also it does not consider the fact that these conditions would have to be estimated as much as 9 hours in advance. The exact timing of today’s squall or whatever it was from 2:30-3 was unfortunate.
Funny that the meteorologist said that the snow would get worse at Dismissal time – from Yesterday. So the issue was that the NPS made a bad call. Hopefully everyone got home safe including the Metco buses.
Adam– I suggested two conditions that should be cause for school closings. Roads that are too slippery for drivers to fully control vehicles, or when driving visibility is significantly compromised. There are more reasons as well. But those are my top two. The Winter Storm Warning by itself is not reason to close school. But when the warning can be confirmed by on the ground conditions [like this morning], or if forecasts suggest those conditions are imminent, school should be cancelled.
So why doesn’t Newton do late start or early dismissal?
I was fine with today’s call…..however why don’t we dismiss early.? Six Thursdays a year we do the staggered release…..
We could do the same for snow…….
I’ve always assumed we don’t do early dismissal on snowy days because of the cases where some parents simply can’t get to their children in time and the kids might have nowhere to go. You’d hope that there would be at least one teacher or administrator who can stay in the school until the last child leaves but that might not always be feasible.
If they had told us at six am plans can be made……..
I text my neighbor when I get to after care on a snowy day and offer to take her kids home……
Gail…..and today, the same thing …I am sure parents were late to
Pick up kids….hit return too quickly.
I get the trouble with the logistics of an early release, but LOTS of towns did it today – Waltham, Watertown, Wellesley and Weston among many others. I think that would have been the right call for today.
Interesting discussion. I actually thought NPS made the right call for Thursday given what was expected and what it looked like in the morning… it’s been a crazy winter and calling a snow day is so expensive and disruptive to EVERYONE that I have always favored the stance of keeping school open unless it is just not feasible.
Yes, everyone should be concerned about the children’s safety, especially the parents. The students were perfectly safe in school. As a working parent, if they weren’t in school, they would have had to have gone somewhere else because certainly my office was not closed yesterday.
I remember when my children were in Elementary School and I worked in Cambridge and did not have a way of working from home, I made sure to have a backup contingency for a snow day. I made sure I had a way for my kids to be safe until I could get to them. And yes, it usually involved either a neighbor, one of their friends, or a hired a babysitter. It didn’t happen a lot … but on the occasions that it did, I felt my kids’ safety was worth whatever cost or inconvenience it was to me.
As they got older, they could walk home … near the high school, they can walk to a nearby business, grab a cup of hot cocoa and wait for me … which is a heck of a lot safer than driving in such weather. I made sure they are dressed for such a possibility.
I RARELY defend or take the side of NPS on these sorts of things. But since I am often known for criticizing them…I felt I should speak up when I am pleasantly surprised that they made the gutsy call that they did yesterday. I guess, I always felt that the public school had a duty to be open and available to receive those who wished to be educated. It was their job to be there.
The High School did get let out about an hour early. Should it have been an hour earlier? Might have been less messy. We made the call for our high schooler to walk home, and she did.
The high school did not close early yesterday – it let out at 235 as usual.
And many of us had contingency plans – I worked from home – it still took me almost 2 hours to get my kids home.
Joanne is correct – h.s. dismissal was the usual 2:35, with buses not until 3:40 (which is standard on Thursdays for some reason.)
Great call having school yesterday…and today. Wish they’d go on weekends too!
The Globe must be watching Village 14. Article in today’s paper on this subject.
Hmm … my high schooler called and told me she was let out at 2p (okay, only 1/2 hr early). She walked and was home by 2:30ish.
Today I had the sloppiest, slushiest morning walk of the year. Let’s hope it stays above freezing for a while before the next deep freeze.