Lincolnite

I don’t think the argument was just the 3.8” of snow, it was the sheet of ice under the snow. The letter makes a good point though - if you feel strongly about it, stay home with your kids. Missing one day won’t kill them, and you can use it to do some fun activity with them. It’s no use whining after the fact.

I agree. It was the ice, not the snow. As it is now on Prescott street near Union College both my vehicles, front wheel drive, struggle up the hill from 54th to 48th to get my son to Calvertt. my speedometer was going 35 and my car was going 5 from 53rd to the middle of the campus block because of the ice on the street. I know the main streets are not that bad, but I have to slip and slide all over to get to them.

As I remember, from what I heard in elementary school, the superintendent (must… not… say… supernintendo…) makes all the decisions based on his gut, and he not only has a heated driveway thusly negating any need for snow removal, but he’s from Alaska, so we never got any snow days of, ever.  Of course that’s what the kids in my fourth grade class way back when said.

I say just tell them kids to sack up and take the dogsled to school.

jwiltshire - it is funny you say that. At my last job our school district’s Chief Operating Officer, who made all final decisions on school closures really WAS from Alaska! It was a running joke in the winter.

I’ve worked at the district level of a couple of different large school districts, the previous one in Colorado where we had much more snow to think about than we do here. Every district is different, and I have not been with LPS long enough to know any details about how it is done here, but I would guess it is similar almost everywhere. My understanding is that it all goes down something like this…

Out in Colorado I happened to be friends with the guy who had to make the ultimate call on whether school went on as planned, was delayed, or was cancelled for our district. Given the fact that there were 3 possibilities (normal, late, cancelled), no matter what his decision was, 2/3 of the people were likely to be upset by it.

At least in large school districts, it is rarely a decision the Superintendant has anythng to do with. In fact, NO ONE wants to make the decision, it is radioactive in regards to popularity. Plus, the decision is usually made between midnight and 4am, and whomever makes the call is almost always certain to be at work by 6am that day, regardless of whether school is cancelled or not.

By the way - did you know this? School can be cancelled for students, but all district office employees are still required to report to work unless there is a major storm causing a “District-Wide Closure”, in which only emergency personnell report. They are usually the Asst. Superintendant of Operations, and Facilities people who make sure water lines aren’t breaking and parking lots and sidewalks are getting cleaned, and roofs are not collapsing under weight of ice and snow. In reality, a school cancellation would result in much of the district office staff being forced to take a “vacation” day so they could stay home with their kids who don’t have school. Ironic, huh?

The decision on school delays and cancellations is usually made by an Assistant Superintendant of Operations, or COO, or someone similar. They almost always do whatever the Director of Transportation reccomends. The Director of Transportation has selected bus drivers who go out on the roads between midight and 1am in their school busses to test the conditions. They report their feelings on the matter, the Director of Transportation compares their reports to the weather service reports for the coming morning, and has to make a decision by 4 am. Sometimes politics and emotions do come into call, after all, the decisions are made by people. I recall a time in the 1990s when we had a bus crash on a winter morning. No students were killed, luckily, but we had a lot more delayed starts and cancellations for a couple of years after that.

At 4am they contact a list of media outlets to announce the decision. Something I had never thought about was this process. I can’t speak for Nebraska, but in Colorado this is how it worked. To keep pranksters from contacting the TV stations with false school closure reports, the TV & radio stations sent out a yearly set of code sentences. When you call to report a cancellation, the station requests that you read them a certain numbered sentence or two for verification purposes.

It is too late by that point to go to bed, so they go ahead and go in to work, and wait for the phone to start ringing.

Personally, I am just glad I don’t have to make the decision!