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Most schools around here are closed today - not just a 2-hour delay - even though the snow from Thursday is mostly cleared from the roads. It was 3 degrees at 7 a.m. - about 20 degrees below the average low temperature this time of year - and the winds are brutal. Even my nonprofit employer was closed today - one of our programs is a state-funded preschool, and we usually follow the school district's lead. Most of the students walk to school, so buses aren't usually a factor. Cold temperatures for kids walking, the road conditions for teachers driving to school, and how well the sidewalks around town are cleared for the kids to walk to school safely are the factors the district uses.
We don't have any snow. Our 2 hour delays this week were based on temperature/busses only. I don't know what the temp was at 7:45 am the usually time my kids would be waiting on the bus, but at 9:45 it was 21 degrees. The bus drivers start around 5:30 or so as they have to pick the HS students up for a 7/7:15am start then the ES and then the MS are last with a 9am start which was 11am today.
It's because of the buses. Diesel fuel freezes at super low temps. Block heaters/coolant warmers need to be run for about two hours to be effective, so the delay leaves sufficient time to get frozen engines running. Also, dead batteries are replaced during that time period. If you live in an area where school has never been delayed for cold weather, it's probably because your bus yard has enough block heaters to cover every bus, and they're used consistently.
If a school district is facing bankruptcy because they have to pay bus drivers an extra two hours once every five years to start up a bus in the cold, then the school is being run very poorly. Of course that doesn't surprise me given that it's government run. They manage to waste money at a rate of 1000 times that and voters will usually approve giving them even MORE money because the schools "need" to waste more money on all kinds of stupid stuff. I always vote NO to giving schools more money because it is guaranteed to be wasted.
If a school district is facing bankruptcy because they have to pay bus drivers an extra two hours once every five years to start up a bus in the cold, then the school is being run very poorly. Of course that doesn't surprise me given that it's government run. They manage to waste money at a rate of 1000 times that and voters will usually approve giving them even MORE money because the schools "need" to waste more money on all kinds of stupid stuff. I always vote NO to giving schools more money because it is guaranteed to be wasted.
Colorado is notorious for underfunding public schools. My Denver metro district has never turned down a bond or levy in all its years of existence. Our entire community stands behind our schools and it shows in the quality of our graduates.
If a school district is facing bankruptcy because they have to pay bus drivers an extra two hours once every five years to start up a bus in the cold, then the school is being run very poorly.
It gets cold a lot more often than “once every five yearsâ€.
"The district [Kansas City] considers five factors when deciding whether to close its schools: air temperature, wind chill temperature, road conditions, precipitation and weather timing (for instance, if weather is most extreme during school commute times). Up in Minnesota, temperatures have to be a little more extreme to warrant school closings, according to MPR News. For Minneapolis public schools, a closing is considered if the wind chill is minus 35 degrees or lower. For St. Paul public schools, the wind chill has to be lower than minus 40 degrees. Meanwhile, schools in central Alabama had delayed openings on Thursday as the forecast predicted air temperatures with a low of 11 degrees and high of 32."
[Information in brackets mine.]
Plus more. Schools in Anchorage AK never close d/t cold, though they do close for hazardous road conditions.
So it seems the buses won't start in Alabama if it's 11 degrees, while in MN it has to be much colder, probably below zero and in AK it never happens!
This article: https://www.indystar.com/story/life/...think/4807077/ shows how the temp does not go up much in those two hours on extremely cold days, at least in Indianapolis. It also says the buses are plugged in overnight to keep the fuel from jelling, but that sometimes they have a problem starting. Plus, "When it comes to the educational effect, schools are not required to make up two-hour delays, said Daniel Altman spokesman with the Indiana Department of Education." So that may be an incentive to call a delay rather than cancelling altogether.
To clarify, I'm better with school being closed all day than a 2 hr delay which seems quite disruptive.
"The district [Kansas City] considers five factors when deciding whether to close its schools: air temperature, wind chill temperature, road conditions, precipitation and weather timing (for instance, if weather is most extreme during school commute times). Up in Minnesota, temperatures have to be a little more extreme to warrant school closings, according to MPR News. For Minneapolis public schools, a closing is considered if the wind chill is minus 35 degrees or lower. For St. Paul public schools, the wind chill has to be lower than minus 40 degrees. Meanwhile, schools in central Alabama had delayed openings on Thursday as the forecast predicted air temperatures with a low of 11 degrees and high of 32."
[Information in brackets mine.]
Plus more. Schools in Anchorage AK never close d/t cold, though they do close for hazardous road conditions.
So it seems the buses won't start in Alabama if it's 11 degrees, while in MN it has to be much colder, probably below zero and in AK it never happens!
This article: https://www.indystar.com/story/life/...think/4807077/ shows how the temp does not go up much in those two hours on extremely cold days, at least in Indianapolis. It also says the buses are plugged in overnight to keep the fuel from jelling, but that sometimes they have a problem starting. Plus, "When it comes to the educational effect, schools are not required to make up two-hour delays, said Daniel Altman spokesman with the Indiana Department of Education." So that may be an incentive to call a delay rather than cancelling altogether.
To clarify, I'm better with school being closed all day than a 2 hr delay which seems quite disruptive.
The buses in Minnesota likely have plug in block heaters while those in Alabama won't. Same way with sanders.
From a school year perspective a 2 hour delay is better since it doesn't (typically) have to made up during breaks or, as is most common in Maryland, tacking it onto the end of the year, like a full day closure has to.
Either one is disruptive.
Here's what often happened when we switched to an A/B schedule:
Monday is an A Day, you have specific groups of students that day and a different group on a B Day.
You have Tuesday off for snow, you don't see your B Day kids.
You come back Wednesday and follow up your Monday lesson, which Tuesday's classes haven't had yet.
Thursday B Day you now have to do your Tuesday lesson. A Day kids are ahead now.
You end up playing catch up for weeks. It gets worse if you have more weather days.
More than a few times it would shake out that you wouldn't see those B Day kids for a week or more.
The further south you get the wimpier people seem to be. We are closed here for 4 or 5 degrees F, but in Michigan they would be closed all the time if they did that. It is strange and I don't get it.
The further south you get the wimpier people seem to be. We are closed here for 4 or 5 degrees F, but in Michigan they would be closed all the time if they did that. It is strange and I don't get it.
Some of it is preparedness, such as with clothing. You wouldn't believe the number of kids down here who don't have a decent winter coat, and it has nothing to do with money.
"The district [Kansas City] considers five factors when deciding whether to close its schools: air temperature, wind chill temperature, road conditions, precipitation and weather timing (for instance, if weather is most extreme during school commute times). Up in Minnesota, temperatures have to be a little more extreme to warrant school closings, according to MPR News. For Minneapolis public schools, a closing is considered if the wind chill is minus 35 degrees or lower. For St. Paul public schools, the wind chill has to be lower than minus 40 degrees. Meanwhile, schools in central Alabama had delayed openings on Thursday as the forecast predicted air temperatures with a low of 11 degrees and high of 32."
[Information in brackets mine.]
Plus more. Schools in Anchorage AK never close d/t cold, though they do close for hazardous road conditions.
So it seems the buses won't start in Alabama if it's 11 degrees, while in MN it has to be much colder, probably below zero and in AK it never happens!
This article: https://www.indystar.com/story/life/...think/4807077/ shows how the temp does not go up much in those two hours on extremely cold days, at least in Indianapolis. It also says the buses are plugged in overnight to keep the fuel from jelling, but that sometimes they have a problem starting. Plus, "When it comes to the educational effect, schools are not required to make up two-hour delays, said Daniel Altman spokesman with the Indiana Department of Education." So that may be an incentive to call a delay rather than cancelling altogether.
To clarify, I'm better with school being closed all day than a 2 hr delay which seems quite disruptive.
I'm in North Dakota and our school district doesn't bus.
We close if the power goes out before lunch and we can't serve lunch to kids.
That's it. We closed once for frigid temps (we were around -60, the same as Minneapolis when they closed) and our governor did not pardon the missed day so we had to make it up.
So literally a power outage is the only thing that will close our schools. Blizzards, wind chill far below -35, winds at 55+ mph and yet we're in school. The people who move here from Texas (we get a lot of them) are always shocked when we don't cancel school for big storms or super cold temps.
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