Superintendents confer, monitor, go outside to see for themselves before canceling school
When a storm is approaching, Groton Superintendent Michael Graner usually hears from his science curriculum coordinator first.
"He sends me a heads up quite far in advance," Graner said of Terry Henkle, a retired meteorologist who is now the curriculum coordinator for grades 6-12 science. "As soon as there's a concern about weather, he writes me an email."
Graner wakes about 4:15 a.m. and consults with three people before calling area superintendents to weigh in about closing school: The department's director of buildings and grounds, Groton town police and the bus company.
By about 4:45 a.m., superintendents for about 10 towns in southeastern Connecticut - including Groton, New London, Stonington, Norwich and Salem - talk via email and text messaging about the situation, Graner said.
"We all weigh in, whether a delayed start would help us," Graner said. "It depends on the weather conditions, temperature, when we think the event might clean up a bit." Superintendents also consult one another about threatening storms and whether to close school early, he said.
In Stonington, Superintendent of Schools Van Riley uses a two-fold process that begins the night before to decide if he should cancel school.
First, Riley communicates with school Business Manager Bill King, who monitors the impact of the storm with the police department, highway department and bus company. He said the multiple sources give him and King a good picture of the storm's impact on the schools.
"Personally I try to make a decision the night before if possible so parents can plan. That seems to work half the time," Riley wrote in an email on Thursday after canceling school early in the morning.
He then confers with the other area superintendents through email, phone and text messages.
Superintendents not only confer with each other but after making a decision they check out the other districts, Norwich Superintendent Abby Dolliver said, "because nobody wants to be the last one standing."
The superintendents try to be "consistent if at all possible" with their decision, Riley said, because Stonington and other towns also send students to regional magnet schools. "We also have teachers and staff members who live outside Stonington. Having similar schedules helps families with child care, etc.," he said.
Other superintendents in the region follow a similar process - and this winter they've had to do it often. Stonington, Waterford, Montville and other districts have canceled school five times.
"As you can guess, the decision to close schools is typically a 'no win' situation, and one should never expect that most people will like the decision that is made," New London Superintendent Manuel J. Rivera said in an email last month. "What is most important to me is the safety of our students and staff, and that is what drives my decision."
When he was leading the Norwalk school district, Rivera sent a three-page letter to all parents to give them some insight into his snow day decision-making process. In the letter, he wrote that he monitors forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and leaves his house to experience the condition of the roads for himself. Once he gets "up to speed" in New London, Rivera said, he plans to put together a similar letter for New London parents.
Once Rivera makes his decision, he relays word to Executive Assistant Paula Cymbala, who sets the district's internal snow day communication process in motion. Cymbala alerts local media outlets, sends an email to all district staff members notifying them of the cancelation or delay, and contacts the company that operates the city's school buses, according to Communications Manager Julianne Hanckel.
Hanckel activates the "robocall" that goes to parents and staff, and then updates the district's Facebook page and Twitter feed.
Once school principals receive word of the cancelation or delay, they send a separate email to their building staff, Hanckel said. The goal, Hanckel said, is to spread the word as widely as possible before 6 a.m.
"People need to get ready for work, they need child care for the day," she said. "We try to give as much advanced notice to families and get the message to them as soon as possible."
Above all else, the superintendents said, student safety is the top consideration when weighing a snow day.
"The bottom line is the safety of our students and staff is the number one concern," said Montville Public Schools Superintendent Brian Levesque. "I am not worried about adding a day to the schedule. I will not risk safety just to get the day in. I often say, 'I can guarantee the makeup day in June will have much better road conditions.'"
Levesque wrote in an email that he determines whether to hold school based on weather forecasts and conversations with meteorologists, the Director of Public Works and the district's head of maintenance.
Levesque and Waterford Superintendent Jerry Belair said that on the day of a weather event, they wake up early to monitor weather and make a determination about how to handle the day - Levesque at 4 a.m., Belair at 4:30.
Belair calls Buildings and Grounds Director Jay Miner in the morning to discuss road quality. A complicating factor in Waterford, Belair said in a phone interview, is differences in topography among regions of town.
He said by way of example that the Quaker Hill area is relatively hilly and set at a higher altitude than other parts of town, and so sometimes sees more snow and lower temperatures. The Great Neck area lies on the shoreline, he noted, making it more susceptible to the impact of storms that hit harder on coastal areas.
Lyme-Old Lyme Superintendent Ian Neviaser said he gets information from the schools' bus company, which assesses road conditions for itself, in addition to the public works crews in both towns and the schools' facilities director.
Neviaser aims for notifications to go out around 5:45 a.m., since some high school and middle school students are up early, parents may need to make other arrangements, and staff also have to figure out their travel plans.
But it's not always easy to decide whether or not to cancel.
"It's probably one of the hardest parts of the job," Neviaser said. "I feel for the forecasters a little bit - predicting the weather is not an exact science."
Dolliver, the Norwich superintendent, said when the weather forecast calls for snow and sleet, she gets little sleep, checking with the Weather Channel and two weather cellphone applications before bed and getting up at 3:30 to 4 a.m. to join the chain of communication with her peers throughout the region.
Dolliver sends emails to the region's other superintendents asking their plans. She texts back and forth with Norwich Free Academy Head of School David Klein, and he does the same with the other seven superintendents in NFA's partner districts. Klein said his snow day typically starts at 3 a.m., but communication can begin days earlier depending on long-range forecasts.
In between, Dolliver makes calls to the Norwich Police Department to talk to the on-duty supervisor and to the city Public Works Department to learn their overnight road experiences. She adds the First Student school bus company's Norwich manager to the list.
And she makes the decision by 5 or 6 a.m. If school is closed or delayed, Dolliver and school Business Administrator Athena Nagel send official messages to the 4,700 people on the automated messenger list - parents, staff, city officials - and alert media to spread the word.
Preston Superintendent John Welch has it a bit easier. As a small town that sends high school students to NFA, Preston follows the region's largest high school's lead.
"In the almost 10 years I have been Preston's superintendent, I can think of only two occasions where we deviated from NFA's decision to either delay or cancel," Welch said. "When one does so, it creates complications around transportation services."
Since high school students from Salem attend East Lyme High School, East Lyme Superintendent of Schools James Lombardo consults the superintendent and road crews in Salem as part of his decision-making. Some days have brought snow to Salem, but only rain to East Lyme, he said.
Lombardo also takes into account the decisions of New London and Groton, since the district sends a numbers of students to vocational, magnet and charter schools in those two communities, he said.
But the threshold for canceling school in East Lyme may be lower than in Vermont where Lombardo was superintendent for 18 years. It would take a much more severe storm to close school in Vermont - where chilly days are routine and cars and school buses are typically equipped with snow tires - than in southeastern Connecticut, he said.
"The amount of snow and the type of snow we have can make the roads much more dangerous here," he explained.
Now, as the numbers of snow days have piled up for area school districts, the superintendents said they are eager to have one thing less to worry about.
"I'm very much looking forward to springtime," Belair said.
Staff writers Colin A. Young, Joe Wojtas, Claire Bessette, Deborah Straszheim and Kimberly Drelich contributed to this report.
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