Many years ago, I had the pleasure of speaking to a former superintendent. He was old, and he was wise. It was snowing outside. We started talking about whether schools should be open the next day. He shared this with me.
He said, “Rob, I don’t send busses out in the snow any more. One time I waited too long(it was snowing during school) to make the call, and we sent our busses home as normally scheduled.” He paused, and you could tell this was tough to talk about. “I waited and waited for that last bus to call in, and let us know that our students had made it home safely. ” He paused again, ” I started praying earnestly. I was sweating bullets. The call finally came that the bus had made it home. I promised myself that I wasn’t going wait too long to make that decision again, and I didn’t. That really scared me. From that point on, the decision was easy. I didn’t care who got mad about their kids being out of school. I wasn’t going to sit there in the silence again, waiting for that last bus to call in.” I have never forgotten that conversation.
There is one other conversation which you will see me reference many times in the coming years on this blog. I had the honor of listening to a local safety leader. He shared this story, “Luck can never be part of your safety protocol. Why? Because at some point your luck is going to run out. There was an accident at an industrial plant many decades ago. They had continued to build the same malfunctioning part. They would test it. It would fail. Nobody had been injured during the first few times that if failed. Then, it happened. There was an explosion which destroyed an entire section of the plant. People died. They had been lucky to this point, and then their luck ran out. Funerals were the result of not getting our people out of the way while the part was tested. Nobody ever thought this would happen. Luck cannot be part of your safety protocol.”
How many times is Kingsport City Schools going to use luck as part of their protocol when making decisions as to whether school should be in session during inclement weather, especially snow. This has been going on for as long as I can remember. It happened again today. I believe there is a certain amount of pride in being the last system to make the call or just making no call at all. Well, our city has grown quite a bit since the good old days where we “rolled” no matter what. We have more people, and many more square miles which includes more and more narrow roads out in the country. We got lucky today. Bridges, overpasses, and sheltered roads were iced over and/or snow covered. I have photos(receipts if you will) of those places. I went out and took some of those photos around 7:40 AM myself so that I knew I was being fair.
What should have happened? Call a one or two hour delay. Don’t roll busses in the morning while the snow is falling on mountain roads in the dark. Get the sun up where our bus drivers can see the road. By using a delay, we can get our busses and high school commuters off the roads during rush hour. Some may say that is not an easy call in hindsight. Fair enough, but what about the other 1,230 times we have made the exact, unwise decision during the past 6-7 decades? This is a pattern. This same old schtick is getting old. Worse, it is gambling with the lives of our students/faculty/staff, and for what? So that we can “one-up” other school systems.
Here are my receipts. Below is Riverport Road. This bridge was a complete sheet of ice. The car behind me came through sideways.
Some will say, “Well the roads were ok where I was.” Indeed, it depends where you were. Notice how quickly the road conditions change in the following photos. This bridge on Wilcox was a solid sheet of ice. The road before passing onto the bridge was dry.
And you know if the roads looked like this in the middle of town, they had to have been worse in places like Rock Springs which tends to get more snowfall since that area has about 200-300′ more elevation than downtown. The “it caught us off guard” argument cannot be made. Many, many other systems either closed or called delays with ample warning to parents.
Again, call a one or two hour delay…and we would have been money. Instead of proving that we can go to school in any condition (safety be d@%^d), let’s show some wisdom. In addition to busses, we have parents with van loads of kids, and we also have young drivers out there. Remember them.
It is the holidays, and I love traditions. But this is one tradition which needs to stop.
