The recent bad weather led to many area school districts canceling or delaying classes on Monday and Tuesday.
School officials are left with making decisions which affect thousands of students, parents, guardians and employees in the region.
Of course, Tyrone Area and Bellwood-Antis are just two of those districts, and the superintendents of those schools offered some insights into the decision-making process when school schedules are affected by the weather.
Tyrone Area School Superintendent Dr. William N. Miller said in the end, “We do our best.”
For Tyrone, the process usually starts in the early morning hours and includes a number of procedures including being in contact with the district’s bus contractor Mort Snyder about conditions of the roads buses must travel to get the students to school.
In some cases, a decision to delay or cancel school could be made the day before, but Dr. Miller said in most cases such decisions are worked on in the early morning hours.
Tyrone and Bellwood both canceled classes from the get-go on Monday. However, Tuesday was a different story when both districts made the call on Monday night to have a two-hour delay.
Miller said about 7:30 a.m., Tuesday, the decision was made to cancel classes in Tyrone. Bellwood-Antis made the same decision. Miller said he is in contact with administrators throughout Blair County and works particularly close with his counterpart at Bellwood-Antis, superintendent Brian Toth.
Miller said the decision to delay or cancel comes from an information-gathering process which includes checking current weather and predictions, the input of the bus contractor, information from other districts and information gathered from weather observers such as staff members, etc.
Toth was also asked about his district policies and the specific decisions regarding Monday and yesterday.
“We wanted to error on the side of safety rather than have something happen with our buses or students,” said Toth. “It seemed like all the weather services were leaning towards heavy snow falling throughout the day.
“If we had brought the students in, it would have been difficult to send them home early or on time given the projections,” said Toth.
He also explained the decision which went into calling for the two-hour delay for Tuesday and then going to a cancellation.
“We look at the amount of snow and ice and current conditions of the road,” said Toth.
In regard to Bellwood-Antis, supervisor of support services, Duane Hollen checked the roads and said in addition to the snow, icy conditions had developed overnight. Toth said he checked the roads himself before the decision to cancel was made around 7:30 Tuesday morning.
Toth said the school district also uses information from Antis Township, Bellwood Borough and PennDOT advisories in making decisions. He said there is information regarding cancellation and delay policy on the district’s website: http://tuckahoe.blwd.k12.pa.us.
Information posted there indicated the district attempts to steer away from using weather predictions in making a final decision but sometimes making such a call based on predictions is “unavoidable.”
Toth said he receives weather alert emails from WJAC-TV, WPXI-TV and The National Weather Center to keep him updated on weather problems.
Dr. Miller said while some districts decided to only delay classes on Tuesday, Tyrone opted to cancel after the initial delay due to high winds and the road conditions on secondary roads.
He said districts in Blair County with the exception of Altoona, have the option of an early dismissal. Miller said in an early dismissal situation, students are usually not sent home until at least after lunch.
“We like them to have a meal,” said Miller.
He said Tyrone has instituted an “early alert” system which notifies parents and guardians of an early dismissal through an automated phone call. He said the system can also be used to alert the district’s approximately 250 employees. The system was used Tuesday to tell employees the delay had been changed to a cancellation.
Miller said the system could be used in other emergency situations to alert parents and guardians. He said it had been used once when some students were kept at the school regarding a non-weather related matter.
Toth said Bellwood-Antis looked into the system but does not currently use it. He said the district is considering a computer desktop alert system using the internet so that parents and guardians could download a weather emergency icon to their computer desktop to receive the latest information.
Both districts plan to make up the two snow days on Thursday, March 24 and Monday, March 28.
