Are public schools being reckless because it is the last week

[qtkimi]

Today is the last day of school in my school district yet we are currently under a tropical storm warning and had a tornado warning early this morning and expected to have more when the next band comes in off the gulf. Yet public schools are open. I am completely baffled by this logic, my boss is going to be mad when I show up to work with DS. Oh well you do what you gotta do.

[bettyandbob]

So it is a warning not a watch, which means conditions are right for formation of storms, but we don't know when/if they will form.

 

You can't hide in your basement all the time.

 

I don't think it has anything to do with the last week of school. You just have continue on being aware that you may need to take action. My local public schools have emergency plans and regular practice for tornado drills. So, unless the warning became a watch I'd send the children to school and I'd continue going to work, which I suspect the majority of people are doing where you are.

 

If this were during summer vacation most people would be still dropping dc at daycare/day camp and I doubt most of those programs have as well practiced emergency plans.

[KungFuPanda]

I don't understand why work is safer than school or home?

[Pawz4me]

So it is a warning not a watch, which means conditions are right for formation of storms, but we don't know when/if they will form.

 

You can't hide in your basement all the time.

 

I don't think it has anything to do with the last week of school. You just have continue on being aware that you may need to take action. My local public schools have emergency plans and regular practice for tornado drills. So, unless the warning became a watch I'd send the children to school and I'd continue going to work, which I suspect the majority of people are doing where you are.

 

If this were during summer vacation most people would be still dropping dc at daycare/day camp and I doubt most of those programs have as well practiced emergency plans.

 

Your understanding of the definitions is backwards.

 

A watch means certain conditions are possible; go about your business as usual but stay alert/informed. A warning means those conditions are occurring or expected to occur imminently and everyone in the warning area needs to take any necessary steps to ensure their safety.

 

NOAA explanation of watch versus warning

 

And yes, I think it's rather crazy to not cancel school while under a tropical storm warning. And since it's the last day it's not exactly like anything productive is going to occur anyway.

[bolt.]

In my district schools are always open on school days, regardless of extreme weather. It's considered to always be a parent's decision if they think its not a good day for whatever reason.

 

I asked about this and was told that many children (older kids) are unwisely left home alone by bread winning parents if school is canceled unexpectedly. Similarly many teens have nowhere to be except school on a daily basis. It's safer for those kids to 'go to school' than to be unsupervised (or potentially out in the cold at school doors) especially under poor conditions. Therefore the schools remain 'open' and run limited things, with whatever staff they have, for whatever students arrive.

[Dmmetler]

It also depends on when the warning comes up. If the Warning comes up after kids are already on their way to school (and in my area, school opening times stagger over a 3 hour period, with buses starting to run an hour before that), closing school would mean sending the kids on the bus BACK home, and potentially leaving them on the bus or walking from a bus stop to home during weather where the safest place is inside. If school is going to be cancelled in my area, the decision has to be made before 4:00 in the morning. That's OK for snow/ice-usually by 4:00, if something is going to fall, it's falling. For tornadoes, not so much (we had a thunderstorm that turned into a quite unexpected tornado warning last night when a waterspout was sighted on the Mississippi river, without even having a tornado watch in effect).

 

I wrote the emergency plan for my former school a decade ago, and I have to say that schools are really stuck. It's not legal to have classrooms without multiple evacuation routes, which means windows-but that also means no safe place to shelter from tornadoes. Usually, the best choice is whatever hallway exists on the 1st floor-and that assumes a school that was built with internal hallways (which is not always the case-in some parts of the country, most classrooms have a door outside and have covered walkways, with limited internal hallways). Some of the newer schools are built with a commons area in the middle now, with classrooms opening off it, and at least two outside, storm-rated doors, and that seems like the best choice-but even those usually aren't really enough space when you're talking schools of over 1000 kids.

[MomtoCandJ]

Where Dd went to Headstart, the storm rooms were the bathrooms... The school houses prek-12. I think all the bathrooms are storm shelters.

[jillian]

I remember being in school during Tropical Storm Allison in Houston (when it dropped over 36 inches of rain in 2 days after it stalled) and they left the schools open. Partially that happened because the superintendent was an ass (later got fired for various reasons but mismanagement of students and safety was a big one). The pictures of the Houston area http://www.khou.com/...-121959284.html show how bad the flooding was. That's I-10 in the heart of the Houston Independent School District.

 

We are under watches here in SC already too.

[Joanne]

And yes, I think it's rather crazy to not cancel school while under a tropical storm warning. And since it's the last day it's not exactly like anything productive is going to occur anyway.

 

Schools have laws they have to follow in terms of hours open in which school is "held".

 

I suspect cancelling school would break the law.

[scubamama]

I must need more coffee b/c I thought you were talking about being EDUCATIONALLY reckless :lol: Here, the last week or two of school means movies, parties, field trips, jog a thons, assemblies, and more. Not all in the same day, of course. They need recess after all!

:laugh:

 

Cheers!

Michele

[Mom2OandE]

We are being plummeted by Andrea now. All night our weather radio was going off for tornados in our area. We finally fell back asleep at 5 am. PS friends took their kids to school two hours later. We live blocks from the school and our roads are flooded. The next band is suppose to be filled with lightening. Personally I think they should air on the side of caution. A local catholic school cancelled after two hours and sent everyone home.

[MFA323]

I must need more coffee b/c I thought you were talking about being EDUCATIONALLY reckless :lol: Here, the last week or two of school means movies, parties, field trips, jog a thons, assemblies, and more. Not all in the same day, of course. They need recess after all!

:laugh:

 

Cheers!

Michele

 

 

I thought this, too. Several of the PS around here told the parents last week that they would not be taking attendance or planning activities this week. They had been watching movies and having parties for two weeks already, so I guess they were out of time-wasting activities.

[beaners]

Your understanding of the definitions is backwards.

 

A watch means certain conditions are possible; go about your business as usual but stay alert/informed. A warning means those conditions are occurring or expected to occur imminently and everyone in the warning area needs to take any necessary steps to ensure their safety.

 

NOAA explanation of watch versus warning

 

And yes, I think it's rather crazy to not cancel school while under a tropical storm warning. And since it's the last day it's not exactly like anything productive is going to occur anyway.

 

 

Good post! I like to remember which is which by remembering which word is longer. Warning has more letters, so it's more serious.

[Mama Geek]

Growing up in SC I don't ever remember school being cancelled for tropical storms or possible tornados and rarely hurricanes. I lived inland by a couple of hours and they did cancel 1 day for Hugo. We had beautiful sunny weather that day. The storm went north. Now if anybody sees one flurry of snow they cancelled school there.

[Dmmetler]

Where Dd went to Headstart, the storm rooms were the bathrooms... The school houses prek-12. I think all the bathrooms are storm shelters.

 

I hope her school had better janitorial staff than mine did-the bathrooms were GROSS by about 12:00 each day, especially the boys. I swear that if I'd been a kid at that school, I would have held it rather than go in there. I can't imagine riding out a tornado in one.

[Pawz4me]

Schools have laws they have to follow in terms of hours open in which school is "held".

 

I suspect cancelling school would break the law.

 

 

:confused1: :confused1:

 

Schools are routinely cancelled here for weather events. Snow, ice storms, flooding, the remnants of a hurricane, etc. Missed days are required to be rescheduled/made up, since state law does require a minimum number of hours/days per school year. I'm guessing the school board's reasoning in the OP's case is that very few kids will show up for school and the ones who don't can just be counted absent and thus avoid the necessity of having to make up a day. That's a big gamble considering potential lawsuits if anything happens.