Another snow day!!! Some may be excited, others not so much. I do know that students love a day off until you let them know that their summer vacation gets shorter with every cancellation. I know that many of you have summer plans that may be impacted with each snow cancellation. I know that delays and cancellations are a burden for most families. I also know that a school calendar year ends June 30th. Unfortunately, mother nature does not care about any of this. It just keeps snowing and snowing, storm after storm, leaving superintendents with the decision "Should I cancel, delay, early release, or hold school as planned?" Some of you have asked and some may be curious, "What goes into making this decision?" So I thought you might like to know what goes into making the call. I will use this most recent nor'easter as an example.
It all started last week when the news predicted another nor'easter coming up the coast, hitting New England on Tuesday into Wednesday. I began tracking the storm on Sunday. I use a minimum of four websites for forecasting the storm. At minimum, I look at the timing of the storm, the type of precipitation, predicted snowfall totals per hour, winds, and temperatures. On Monday, I participated in a statewide conference call conducted by the NH Department of Safety that included the Governor's office, NH Department of Transportation, NH State Police, and the National Weather Service. The report from the National Weather Service is always helpful because they tend to be very accurate in predicting the timing of the storm and the snow fall totals, by region, per hour. After the conference call, I checked the forecasts/radars on the various websites to see if they all aligned with the National Weather Service forecast. In the case of this past storm, all forecasts aligned. This helps in making the decision to close school the night before. I then began communicating with ten local superintendents to see if we are all on the same page with our thinking. Sometimes we are, sometimes we are not. In most cases, we tend to arrive at the same decision. I then finalized my decision and sent out the call to all of you closing school for Tuesday.
On Tuesday, I went through the same routine as the day before. The big difference between Monday and Tuesday is that I was now tracking the tail end of the storm. This tends to be a little more difficult trying to forecast the timing of when the storm is going to begin tapering off. In the case of this storm, I knew that snow was going to begin tapering off starting at 2 AM, however, it was unclear as to what the snowfall totals per hour would be as the morning hours progressed. Therefore, I decided to wait until this morning to make the call. Morning calls are when our local Department of Public Works, our local police, local superintendents and our bus company become my key contacts for making a decision. And as always, I'm checking the forecasts and radars.
That brings me to this morning, I checked the forecast at 4:15 AM. At 4:30 AM I began communicating with the bus company who had already been in touch with the road agents in both Canterbury and Belmont. At that point a 2-hour delay was the call. 2 hours later, I heard back from the bus company and road agent who both informed me that we received approximately 3 inches of new snow and that the roads were still hazardous for travel. At that point I decided to cancel school. Well, that's after thinking to myself, "Man, I can't believe I have to cancel school again!" I then sent out the call at 6:45 AM changing the 2-hour delay to a cancellation.
My purpose for sharing this with all of you is not to sway your opinion as to whether I made the right call or not. My purpose for sharing this is solely for information only. I find the process very interesting and I hope you do as well.
Student and staff safety is my number one priority in making the call.
Think Spring!
Michael
Michael J. Tursi
Superintendent of Schools
Shaker Regional School District
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