Deciding to cancel school for a snow day remains one of the most public and potentially contentious decisions a School Head can make. After all, parents, faculty, and staff alike can play "armchair-Head" and declare what they would (or would not) have done in your place with the clear vision of hindsight.
Even people unaffiliated with your school weigh in on your decision to cancel or continue classes. One weatherman went so far as to scold local school districts during his weather segment, claiming that schools "put a lot of kids, faculty, administrators, and bus drivers in jeopardy by failing miserably on the call not to close."
Judge a Snow Day
Your school community's safety lies in your hands during bad weather. At the same time, as Head, you don't want to force parents to scramble to arrange child care for no reason. How, then, can you determine whether you should cancel school for wicked winter weather?
- Stay on top of weather reports. Even though forecasts aren't as reliable as we'd often hope when making these sorts of decisions, that's no excuse for getting caught flat-footed the night before a blizzard strikes. Make a habit of looking at the five-day forecast every day; you'll have enough notice to address potential weather problems before the morning they hit. At the same time...
- Don't believe everything you read or hear. Just because a storm is forecast to hit your area doesn't guarantee it will with the ferocity or timing necessary to cancel school. Even if you see Big Blizzard What'sItCalled on your region's weather report, it could strike in the evening hours rather than the morning commute, leaving your regular school schedule in the clear.
- One driveable street doesn't mean they're all clear. Even if you look outside at the immediate circumstances of your neighborhood, you should also consider the travel conditions for others in other geographic locations. (Just because you can get out of your driveway doesn't mean your teachers can!)
Online live streams of highways and major roadways can alert you to road hazards and how far plow crews have gotten.
- Close school for pertinent reasons, not because everyone else shuts down. While it may be useful to keep an eye on what other schools—public and private—are doing in the face of inclement weather, you should cancel based on your analysis of the situation, not someone else's.
For example, you know whether your families rely on private vehicles or public transportation to get students to school. You have no idea how other schools operate, and thus lack the context for their calls on the weather. Thus, it might be appropriate for you to stay open while others close (or vice versa).
Alert Your Community
So after all of your prognostications and deliberations are complete, you've decided to cancel school. Great! Your students will be delighted. But now comes the tricky bit: Letting everyone know that classes are cancelled.
There's the traditional route of "snow chain" phone calls, emergency text alerts to families and staff, website updates, voicemail recordings, and notices to the local news media stations. (However you decide to spread the news quickly to your constituents, make that clear in your handbook and policies!)
Some schools, however, have taken it upon themselves to "jazz up" their snow day alerts.
Why not have your teachers and faculty star in their very own music videos with revised lyrics? Here, Fremont Christian School remakes Miley Cyrus's song "Party in the USA" to tell students that they're "staying home from school today":
On the heels of Winter Storm Juno, Head of School Matt Glendinning at Moses Brown School has made his own rendition of "Let It Go" to announce his school's closure:
If you don't feel like singing, you could always try rapping like Durham Academy's Head of School did to announce the school's closing during the fierce Polar Vortex of February 2014:
If you'd rather not step in front of a camera, you can leave voicemail messages for your parents. Perhaps you'll take a cue from this frustrated superintendent who wished "this awful winter weather ... goodbye, good riddance, and good grief" while notifying parents of yet another snow day due to a morning-rush blizzard forecast for the next day.
Finally, if you want to garner some avid social media followers—and take advantage of your students' addiction to social applications—have your Twitter or Facebook accounts report closings and delays first, as this school board member did with his personal Twitter feed. Grateful students were so excited about the accurate and early notifications, they photoshopped the administrator's head onto pictures hailing him as a "cool kid" and Simba from "The Lion King," as NBC Washington noticed.
Entertaining or ordinary, notices of snow cancellations in as timely a manner as possible will give all members of your school community reason to celebrate. With any luck, you won't be canceling school often this year. But, if you do, know that you'll be making the call with student's safety in mind with the best information you can find.
Additional ISM resources:
ISM Monthly Update for Business Officers Vol. 8 No. 5 Snow Days on Campus
ISM Monthly Update for Business Officers Vol. 12 No. 6 Snow Days Are Ancient History
ISM Monthly Update for Division Heads Vol. 11 No. 5 Snow, Snow, Go Away: Winter Recess Policies
Additional ISM resources for Gold Consortium members:
I&P Vol. 30 No. 12 Lessons From Katrina: Disaster Planning at Private-Independent Schools
