High Risk Days: Should Schools Be Closed

[Jordan Hartley]

You can't imagine the outrage that will come the next day in papers and on the TV news from parents wondering why they had no school for a rain shower.

Exactly thats why this discussion is about cancelling school on a high risk day not whenever there is a tor watch. What was SPC saying at 8:00 am CST this morning when school was starting in AL today. Alabama/GA was under the gun and we all knew there was going to be a tornado today.

What extra steps can be taken? They'll be home alone watching Cartoon Network while the parents are at work...

Do you have kids rdale? 99.9999999% of the parents in this countary do not want their kids home alone watching Cartoon Network untill 7-8 pm when mom or dad gets home.

And again when you tell people we're getting tornadoes, and we get NOTHING, that leads to problems. Look at today - how many people were saying "big outbreak" even this morning, yet it looks like 15-20 tornadoes max. Not quite what a High Risk should have.

Everyone in the countary knows about this event. Maybe to us this wasnt an outbreak but to the public it was. And outbreak or not 18 people died today. The people in that high school should never have been there in the first place.

 

[Shaba117]

No, because the danger is greater if the students are on their way home when the storm hits. Also, some kids will be home alone and may be unsure of what to do during a tornado warning.

It is better to actually keep the students at the school if severe weather is bearing down, even if it's normal dismissal time. However, the school needs a sound plan for that occasion. There was also a reporter on a local AL newscast suggest that if the students wore something to protect their heads, such as bicycle helmets, they would've most likely escaped without serious head injuries.

 

[David Wolfson]

I answered yes, because "it depends" wasn't one of the choices. I think all large public gathering spaces including schools should be emptied when a PDS box goes up in a high (or moderate) risk bull's eye when storm motion and dynamics may not allow adequate advance warning, like this morning. I think there was enough time.

 

[rdale]

"Do you have kids rdale?"

Yep, and if I find out at 7am that school was closed while skies are blue, they are going to be home alone til my workday is done. Very few families can have a parent or babysitter stay home on a moments notice.

"Everyone in the countary knows about this event."

Would they have known about it if the tornado missed the school? No. Did they know (or care) about it at 8am? No.

 

[Jordan Hartley]

Question for Parents only:

How many parents here on storm track are away or aware of someone away from home with no adult supervision when your kids get home from school?

If school got cancelled because "the weather guy said there is going to be a tornado in our area its just a matter of where and when" wouldnt you make sure your child was in a place of safety?

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I have to side with RDale on this. Winter storms are a completely different beast, with a very high verification rate for the majority of locales with the warning area, and a relatively high impact most of the time. Even in High Risk situations, the chance that any particular location will get hit by a tornado is miniscule. Heck, even under a tornado WARNING, the chance of getting hit by a tornado is likely 0.001% (+/- an order of magnitude). At this time, only 25% of tornado warnings verify to begin with, and the average tornado is small and short-lived. So, for the entire area that is warned, a very, very, very small part of the area is ever hit by the tornado. How many schools have been hit in High Risk areas in the past 30 years compared to all the schools that have been in High Risk areas over that time? 0.001%? Less than even that?

As Rob noted, 99.999% of the time, there will end up being no advantage for having a kid home than at school during a High Risk. Heck, I'd rather have someone in a school than in a mobile home during a tornado or very high wind situation (e.g. 100mph RFD winds). In addition, I'd trust school officials to be warned and take action during a warning situation over a kid at home, playing on the computer or playing their Xbox with a good chance of not even getting a warning.

If there is a well-warned and highly-anticipated event, such as a mature derecho, then school officials may let parents pick up their children / let kids out of school early. Fortunately, such events tend to occur either in the last 1/2 of the school day or after school has ended. Even this were to be the case, you'd only have 1-2 hours (in the ideal situation) to enact this plan. If parents are at work, they'd either have to leave work or quickly figure out how to get their kid picked up. I just don't think the risk is worth closing all schools in a High Risk area. Perhaps, in an ideal world, where people don't get overwarning fatigue and where money is no factor, it may be okay. But it just doesn't seem practical to close school early on High Risk days, closing for a threat that is, by all accounts, still very, very small.

 

[rdale]

"If school got cancelled because "the weather guy said there is going to be a tornado in our area its just a matter of where and when" wouldnt you make sure your child was in a place of safety?"

NO weather guy will say that. High Risk + PDS still doesn't mean that. You still missed the fact that thousands of school districts covering hundreds of thousands of people didn't even come to seeing a tornado.

 

[Jordan Hartley]

Ok I can look at it in your shoes and see where cancelling school would be a bad thing. But then thats the whole problem in itself. Who is really raising are kids? We as parents arent home when are kids come home from school. After all we live in a world where parents in this countary now make descions based apon what is convenient for the parent and not what is best for my child.

 

[rdale]

What? As a single father I can't afford childcare for the hour they are alone until I get home... I'm not sure at all what that has to do with this debate though ;>

 

[Nick Parker]

I voted No because of this:

Noting the fact I had the day off, I was keeping an eye out for the school my mother works for in Pulaski Co. here in So. ILL. Their weather radio is something to be desired and the fact that most of the staff do not know the difference between a watch or a warning should frighten some. (Im serious...I know over half of them very well.) However, thier drills are excellent. They get the kids into the interior hallways and preach very heavily on evacuating the gym, cafe, and other large areas.

Looking at most homes in this area (most without safe rooms, basements), and considering most travel 20+ miles to and from work, the children would end up at home alone and unaware of the "impending doom". Just like when my fiancee called me at 7 this morning wondering if she should keep her 6 year old sister home or not. I told her that the schools around here and bulit tough and she would actually be much safer at school then at home in a bathtub. (Thankfully we busted around here)

IMHO, lets keep these kids in school, but we need to keep pushing the campaign for educating our instructors and students where/where not to be when the storm approaches.

On a side note: One of our older school buildings around here was actually built in 1947 and I gaurentee the walls are 1 foot solid concrete with a basement to boot. (from the ole Cold War days) Talk about a safe spot!!

 

[Robert Dewey]

Rob and Jeff Snyder summed up my thoughts quite nicely. The odds of a tornado striking at any given spatial point are extremely low; not enough of a chance to warrant very widespread school closures IMO.

However, I could see the school closure scenario a bit more realistic for MCS events that cover a relatively large area (i.e. a 250 mile long derecho), especially if there has been significant and widespread damage upstream. If such an event is within 60-90 minutes before press time (i.e. before they send kids off to school), I think a closure would make more sense.

Again, I think it boils down to aerial coverage and timing. If there's nothing on the radar except the HIGH outline and a supercell 100 miles away, then I see no reason to call school off. Even if things start to unfold (i.e. my above "derecho scenario") while school is in session, I don't think it's wise to send home early.

 

[Bryan Putnam]

I agree that schools should remain open on high risk days. The school is probably going to be a much safer place for the younger students than at home, and that is without even considering the fact many may be left at home alone. Unfortunately in this case it appears that the school didn't take the right precautions when the tornado hit. At my old elementary school we went into the hall and placed a book over our heads. It is always hard to get a complete and straight story in this situation out of the media, but it sounds like they were taken to the gym and without protection for their heads, as someone already mentioned. Also, if something were to happen near the end of school, they can delay dismissing the kids until the storm passes or can be picked up by a parent. Again, back at my elementary school, we were held after school several times because of lightning. After the storm had passed, we would be dismissed.

My roommate is from Alabama and yesterday was the first time I heard of school being either closed or dismissed early because of severe weather. He mentioned how his sister in Huntsville had gotten dismissed last year during a high risk (Apparently she was also dismissed early today, at about noon). Of course, coming from Colorado, we were much more used to snow days.

 

[beaudodson]

There are more accidents associated with winter storms than tornado outreaks...as far as schools and kids go. So it doesn't make sense to let kids out for a high risk day.

With that said...

Many schools in our area are starting to let out early and SPC said today that some of the schools in Alabama were in the process of letting out or had let out when the tornadoes hit.

 

[Jim Hunt]

I am a little late to the discussion but I can speak with some insight to this topic. I work in a district wide position for a K-12 school district.

The answer is no, you cannot cancel school for high risk days or even go home early. Jeff Snyder pretty much summed up how snow storms are not even comparable to severe weather (or possible sever weather outbreaks.)

Logistically, calling school off early is nearly impossible. Rounding up bus drivers early is the first problem. Many of them work other jobs and just are not able to be available on short notice to come back early. Even if you have them all available, you will not be able to drop many children off as nobody is home and many cannot be left alone.

Other factors are lunches and many schools have busses run double or even triple routes which means you cannot mass dismiss but must dismiss in stages. Usually for most schools in my area, we can usually only get 60 to 75 minutes of early dismissal if we are lucky.

Schools are better off keeping kids in school and we have even delayed dismissal when severe weather was in the area threatening. There was no way we wanted busses of kids on the road if something happened.

As for just calling the day off when there are threats, we already have problems with snow days and parents having trouble finding babysitters. Students are also required to attend a specified number of days and if you miss one for snow or winning the state basketball championship, you have to make it up sometime.

Occasionally the state will grant a waiver but it is very rare. Most districts around Indiana build in 2 or 3 days for snow. For us, we didn’t have a snow day before the first make up day (deadline) so we only had 2 left. Then *bam* we missed 4 days and now are going 2 days at the end of the year. Nothing we can do but comply with state law.

We can get a 2 day waiver for seniors so graduation is not pushed back a week but if we have a March snow event, then we will have to move graduation. That causes so many issues with people already having travel plans and such.

Too many snow days can jam up the summer school schedule and then guess what happens…

Yep, we go to school on Saturdays. We have done that once in 10 years and it was awful (and expensive as we had to pay overtime for hourly support staff).

So you can see there is no way to start cancelling school for high risk days.

Instead, schools need to have a plan and we do at our school. We have people which monitor the weather (including me) from various sources such as TV and radio, spotters, NWS, and radar. Each school has a weather alert radio and people do know the difference between a watch and a warning.

All I can say is I feel for everyone in Alabama and will not judge until more facts are clearly know.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

Great topic, Howard.


I’m on the fence on this. I think schools should be responsible for educating their teachers and students about severe weather, and I’m surprised that even here in the Midwest more schools don’t. When I was in school we never had any sort of presentation about the topic of severe weather and tornadoes. I did, however, have a teacher that almost let me be the “teacher†for a whole class period, except I would be doing a presentation on severe weather and severe weather safety with a focus on what the school can do to ensure the safety of its students. Nothing ever came of that.


I don’t know if schools should be closed on high risks day, my idea would be to have a person who’s job for that day is to watch the weather. I’m talking about someone who just sits at a computer and monitors Doppler Radar, NWR, HWO’s, SPC discussions and basically just keeps an eye on things. This person could be a student who happens to be a trained storm spotter or even a teacher. Just someone who knows what to look for, what products to look at and what to look for on Doppler radar.