Watauga County sees double digit inclement weather days every year. Making the call on whether or not to have school requires careful planning.
As winter comes to a close this year, Watauga County Schools Superintendent Dr. Scott Elliott dives behind the scenes of one of Watauga County’s most notorious traditions: inclement weather days.
Every year, Dr. Elliott brushes off his weather apps to investigate the weather. Unlike what most would assume, preparing for an inclement day usually begins days, if not a week in advance.
“Usually, late in the summer or early in the fall, I start looking at the weather forecast again,” said Dr. Elliott. “That’s where we start, looking at the weather forecast, just like everybody else.”
While most of us have access to weather forecasts, the Watauga County Schools System has direct access to the National Weather Service Station in Blacksburg Virginia. Using weather forecasts and the information gathered by the National Weather Service Station, Dr. Elliot then investigates a deciding factor: road conditions.
“We begin by asking ourselves, what would it take to get to school today?” said Dr. Elliot. “Do we need to have a delay, to let the temperatures warm up or the sun to come out so that drivers can see the road?”
If inclement weather is on the horizon, Dr. Elliot and his team must then investigate road conditions.
“If it looks like we’re going to start having some adverse weather, the transportation director [Jeff Lyons] and I will get up very early in the morning to look at road conditions,” Elliot said. “That can start around 3:30 in the morning.”
Depending on the weather, Dr. Elliot may have five or six other employees in the school system out on the roads inspecting conditions. Employees from the maintenance department to folks who work in the bus garage get up at dawn inspecting roads in the county.
“We have a team member who lives in Bethel who will check the roads in Bethel,” explained Dr. Elliot. “I live out in Deep Gap, so I’ll check the roads out in the Parkway area.”
When investigating road conditions, there are a variety of factors that Dr. Elliot and his team must consider. The length of ice patches, which roads are covered in snow, and the possibility for roads to freeze overnight can drastically affect which roads are safe to drive.
“There isn’t a specific formula for calling inclement weather days because the weather affects different parts of this county in so many different ways,” said Dr. Elliot. “We often will try to determine what is unsafe based on the conditions of the roads, so are they frozen, covered in ice and snow, and if so, how many of them?”
While there is no magic formula to determine if roads are safe, there are distinguishing signs used to identify which roads may be unsafe to travel on.
“We want to make sure that a school bus can at least have two wheels on the road with no snow or ice,” said Elliott. If you spot a patch of ice on a road that’s longer than a school bus, chances are that road won’t be traveled by buses.
Buses aren’t the only things on the minds of Dr. Elliot and his team, the safety of student drivers and staff members is also a concern.
“At Watauga High School, we have close to 400 students who drive to school every day, some of them who have just gotten their license,” explained Dr. Elliot. “I want to make sure that it’s safe for our staff members to be able to get to work as well.”
Depending on road conditions, Dr. Elliot then decides what the next step should be. Snow days are the last resort.
“If we can’t have a delay or limited bus routes,” said Dr. Elliot, “then we need to look at a snow day, a teacher workday, a remote instruction day”.
When COVID-19 allowed students to have access to remote learning through school-provided laptops, inclement weather days evolved. Now, up to fifteen inclement weather days can count as school days, allowing for continuity in learning.
“This year, we can use up to fifteen days of remote instruction,” said Dr. Elliot. “We have remote instruction days to ensure there’s some continuity of learning so that students don’t go a week without any contact from their teachers.”
Remote days have ensured that students can stay on track with the schedule allotted by the North Carolina legislature. Now, snow days don’t mean students fall behind.
“In addition to ensuring some continuity of instruction, remote instruction days have essentially ensured that we don’t have Saturday school anymore, that we can plan for a spring break, and maybe we’ll actually get out of school in the first week of June,” said Dr. Elliot.
While snow days can give students time to enjoy the snow, Dr. Elliot acknowledges that they can be difficult for some families.
“I know that snow days are hard for everybody, especially for families with young children because of child care and changing schedules,” said Dr. Elliot. “Remote instruction makes it even more difficult because now you’re not just looking for childcare, but you’re looking for some way for your child to be able to get online and interact with a teacher.”
While snow days provide challenges for students, parents, and school staff alike, they are necessary to keep students and school staff safe. Snow days are the last resort, and now they provide students with continuity in learning.
“I value keeping things in balance, finding the good things, minimizing the bad things, and making the most of it,” said Dr. Elliot. “I realize it’s not easy for everybody.”
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