Some parents in the Quad Counties were surprised the decision to close schools ahead of the latest winter storm didn’t come the night before.
Officials with at least two of the province’s regional centres for education did, including Cape Breton-Victoria and Halifax; Strait Regional Centre for Education officials waited until just before 6 a.m. Monday.
Paul Landry, the SRCE’s regional executive director, tells The Hawk there is a detailed process for assessing conditions.
“The weather is very changeable, and sometimes the intensity of the predicted weather pattern changes over the last number of hours,” he says. “As we know, it can get better and sometimes it can get worse, or the timing of the arrival can change over that period of time.”
Landry says they start on the morning of a potential snow day by contacting weather services, investigating sites, and speaking to their bus drivers.
He says they then move on to broader consultations before they make a decision.
“We consult with our neighbouring regional centres for education, with our provincial partners at Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal, and the RCMP if required,” he says. “There’s a lot of consultation that takes place prior to school being cancelled.”
Landry says the safety of students is their top priority.
He says they almost never deviate from that process, except on the advice of reps with the provincial Emergency Management Office.
“That has happened in the past with hurricanes that we’ve dealt with in previous years,” he says, “It didn’t happen Sunday evening, so we decided to go with our normal processes.”
Landry says they only decided to close schools after they did their usual work Monday.
