Announcement: Calling a School Closure 

As we witnessed earlier in the week, this time of year brings many changes; playing in the snow, the emergence of holiday thoughts, some colder weather, and the periodic need to close the school due to weather conditions.  

Making the decision to close is never taken lightly. Factored in is information regarding current and upcoming weather and road conditions and we place one aspect ahead of all the others – safety. Our community comes to us from a wide geographical region and the weather and road conditions can be different from place to place when snow squalls are at work. 

I thought it may be helpful for you to know how we go about making the decision.  

Starting the night before, I will monitor two weather outlets, and an outlet for forecasted road conditions. No decision is made the night before; this is just preparatory. The morning of, we are up early with a coffee and reviewing the updated forecasts from the night before including the weather warnings, seeing if the local school buses are running and if the local schools are open. If it is forecast to be dangerous road conditions during the day, consideration will be given to closing.  

As you can imagine, the timing of weather is everything and while we always do our best to get it right there may be times we get it wrong. With snow squalls, I have seen forecasts at 5am indicating it will be a very snowy day throughout with dangerous road conditions, and it then turns out to be sunny by 9am and beautiful all day.  

We will aim to communicate a school closure by 6:30am at the latest and will email that decision in much the same way we email the newsletter. If you do not receive an email, we are open.  

Should the school be open yet the road conditions in your area indicate it is unsafe to drive, please use your discretion and consider staying home. 

I hope this is helpful and please let me know if you have any questions.  

Christopher White, Head of School