Schools Balance Pros And Cons Of Closing For Winter Weather
CHICAGO (CBS) -- When it snows -- as it did Monday night and Tuesday morning -- and when temperatures are expected to be brutally cold, school administrators across the Chicago area have a big decision to make: whether to call off school.
More than 99 percent of schools in the Chicago area had class on Tuesday, after 2 to 5 inches of snow fell Monday night. Now administrators must decide whether to open on Wednesday, when the high is expected to be only 1 degree above zero.
Tracy Marc, community relations coordinator for Orland Park School District 135, said any decision about closing is all about student safety.
"Since this is an elementary school district, and we do have students that are waiting at bus stops, the first line of priority is are the kids going to be safe arriving to school, standing at bus stops, and also traveling by bus," she said.
District 135 notifies parents in a many of the same ways as other districts, through robo-calls, email, Twitter and putting the info on the district's web page.
Marc said, as a precaution, the district always builds four extra days of class into the calendar, in case of snow days.
Waukegan Public Schools spokesman Nicholas Alajakis said "there's really no magic number" when deciding whether to close schools, as temperature and snow totals alone aren't enough to determine how dangerous the weather really is.
"A zero-degree day one day can be completely different from a zero-degree day another day; whereas a 5-inch snowstorm one day can greatly vary from a 5-inch snow storm the other day," he said.
Tn Waukegan, there's an added element this school year: the fact students are already making up days from a lengthy teachers strike by cutting out parts of the winter and spring vacations and other holidays.
"That's something that's in the back of a lot of people's minds who are making those decisions but nobody has mentioned anything about that yet," Alajakis said.
Luckily, Waukegan schools have not had to be closed yet for weather-related reasons, he added.
You can always find a list of Chicago area school closings at cbschicago.com/closings.