School closings: Superintendent on snow day limits, threshold to cancel class
School district leader talks about snow day shortage and close calls
Hazel Park Superintendent Dr. Amy Wilcox spoke about the decision to cancel school due to winter weather and the limit of snow days available.
FOX 2 - Many are wondering if Friday will be the latest in a string of winter weather closing days.
Dig deeper:
The wind chills will be borderline, according to FOX 2 meteorologist Derek Kevra - but complicating matters is that all school districts are limited in the number of cancellations.
Wind chills still look harsh, but not quite as extreme as what we saw earlier in the week. At one point, forecasts showed widespread wind chills between -15 and -20.
Hazel Park Superintendent Dr. Amy Wilcox spoke about the threshold for canceling school.
"(A) negative-20 degree wind chill is about where closings start," she said. "And you know, that's changed over the years, but that's really what I think (where) you can make a determination on when you are looking and trying to think about what am I going to do? Am I going to get a sitter? Or am I having a snow day too, where we can go sledding."
Earlier this week, the Detroit Public Schools closed and it wasn't negative-20 so Wilcox was asked if it can be subjective.
"Every superintendent makes their own decision," Wilcox said. "As a group, you talk, you collaborate. You don't want to be the only one that goes down because then it might be your teachers, it might your parents that are upset. You have to look at the roads, we need to look at the sidewalks.
"I know specifically when our city called an emergency, the other day, no matter what, I would have closed on Monday. Given that fact, we want to make sure that our roads are clear. We have walkers. We have parents that work, but necessarily can't get their kids to school.
"We want make sure those sidewalks and those roads are clear for passage."
Wilcox said the decision on whether to cancel school for Friday will be decided on within the next couple hours.
Because the limit of school cancellation days are capped for districts, there comes a time when extending the semester to hit the required number of in-class days comes into play.
"We get six days that we can utilize, and then we can request the state for three more," Wilcox said. "You know, as a superintendent, and I'm a mom of four - they're grown, I'm a grandma. I am going to do what's best for kids, not necessarily what's the best for the days.
Will school be canceled tomorrow? It's going to be close - here's why
The expected temperatures will be cold, but the bigger concern heading into Friday morning is the wind chill.
"There are ways to move around that. You can extend your school year. And sometimes if you make a bad call, they're not coming anyway. So we've got the time, but I don't think we can just solely go on time. We've got to think about what's best for our community and our students."
Wilcox was asked if superintendents are more likely to have school anyway in bad weather when it comes to spending snow days - and in cases like this winter, are more conservative with all of February and March left.
"That is a decision for some superintendents that they're going to say 'I can't close this day because I don't know what's coming yet,'" she said. "And we were told in the beginning of the season that it's going to be a cold winter. So I think all of us are predicting that there will be more days coming before we get to that spring forecast.
"But for me I have a population that I want to make sure that they can get to school and they're safe and if that means I to close, then that means I'm going to do it."
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The Source: Information for this report is from an interview wit