Making the Call: Everything You Need to Know About Snow Days

Snow-covered trees in Boone continue to produce berries despite the ongoing winter storms that have hit the town in the past couple weeks. Though weighed down by persistent snowfall, the branches remain strong. Photo by: Carrie Bradbury

Carrie Bradbury, Review Desk Lead

For hundreds of students in Watauga County, one phone call is the make or break of their good day. The unmistakable voice of Dr. Wayne Eberle comes through their parents’ phone and announces to all students and staff what the road conditions are like for that day. While it is true that anyone living in Watauga County during the winter season can tell you that freezing temperatures, black ice, and snow storms can be expected and occur often in the months between November and March, the daily updates hold great value for people living in the county. 

While looking at a weather app can give every student and parent a basic idea of what school might look on the day, the Central Office weather team does a much deeper investigation. 

“It starts with a weather event, whether that comes from local TV or Rays weather,” said Eberle. “When we have a weather event coming in, our team then decides what is the severity of it, how we can start planning ahead of time, and where we are going to have to deploy our weather team to go out and check roads.”

Watauga County is made up of many small regions, which can be affected by winter weather differently. Students living in more central areas of the county, such as Boone and Blowing Rock, oftentimes have access to the towns’ plowing and salting services, making roads accessible more quickly. This, however, is not the case for students living in the more rural areas of the county. 

Scouting out the amounts of snow and ice throughout the county is something that the school system must do diligently every time there is a threat of winter weather. Scouts then report back to the Central Office so that a county-wide decision can be made. Because of how unreliable mountainous winter weather can be, the amount of time it takes to make a decision can vary drastically day to day.

“Sometimes we have to decide that in a very quick fashion because it's three in the morning and we're out checking roads and we’ve got to make the call and close schools,” said Eberle. “Sometimes we have time to think through it and figure out what we are going to do when we close schools. But those are some of the other decisions that are happening in the background.”

After making the decision, Dr. Eberle makes the phone call. While calling all parents and teachers in the county is an incredibly prominent part of Dr. Eberle’s job, he and the other members of the weather team make many important decisions that are less apparent to the public. 

“[Superintendent Dr. Leslie Alexander] is ultimately the one who makes the final decision on school operations,” said Eberle. “ Once she has all of the information about road conditions and the decision is made to adjust how school will operate, she and I have a follow-up conversation about how it will impact the school calendar, if at all.”

Students and parents may only come in contact with Dr. Eberle, due to his direct communication through phone calls and emails, but behind the scenes, there is a large team working together to spread information ensuring that the people living in Watauga County stay safe. 

“Ms. Tanner, our Transportation Director, makes the call to all of the bus drivers. Ms. Little, our Director of Communications, sends information to media outlets and updates our web site and I will send an email, text and record the call that goes out to homes,” said Eberle. “We then communicate the timing so that it flows and makes sense for the end user to receive the information.”

There are many regulations that pertain to the school schedule for that particular day, week, or the entire year which the weather team must consider. Delays and cancellations are placed under multiple different categories within the school schedule, all of which have important effects on students and parents, but more importantly, teachers.

“Is it going to be an annual leave day, is it going to be an optional teacher work day, is it going to be a no [school] day, or are we going to try to make it up at the end of the year or on a Saturday?” said Eberle. “So all of those things come into play when thinking through all of the decisions.” 

While it is still a new system, remote learning has added both ease and complication to this decision. Since the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, all Watauga County students have had easier access to computers, making remote learning for elementary, middle, and high schoolers possible. Students now have the ability to sign into Google Meets and interact with their teachers for instruction. The new use of remote learning has made school possible on days when it otherwise wouldn’t be. 

“We have set some expectations for the district for each of those grade levels. I think that when we started the remote process it was in response to COVID,” said Eberle. “We just wanted to make sure you guys were okay. When COVID faded into the background we still had this newly discovered platform that we could now deliver instruction from.”

Despite this new addition, replacing in-person school with remote learning is not as easy as it may appear. The county must take into account the number of days that students are remote, on a delay, and completely out of school to ensure that students get the correct number of hours in a semester and that teachers are getting paid properly for their work.

“We have to make sure that students have at least 185 student days or 1,025 hours of instruction. So we have to make sure that we are following the student calendar law for students,” said Eberle. “We also have to make sure that we are following the rule for pay roll and employees and so those are the things that we think through when making decisions about closing and cancellations.”

Being the voice of weather calls for Watauga County Schools might seem like a repetitive job, but Dr. Eberle finds ways to bring energy to every call. Because he says the date at the beginning of every recorded message, each call requires an original recording. 

“As long as I have internet, I can send out the communication,” said Eberle. “That said, over the years, I have sent the majority of calls out from our district office or from my home but I have also sent calls out from other places including every time zone in the US and even some while in Canada.”