Local

School Systems Review Successes/Failures Post-Storm

January 31st, 2014

Governor Nathan Deal has said several times since this week’s snow storm – and resulting traffic nightmare — that he has no power to decide local school systems’ policies in bad weather.

Several area school systems talked with WABE about the calls they made and what they have learned from this week’s storm.Broadcast Version

Clayton County called off school in the wee hours of Tuesday morning and alerted parents and staff via robo-call around 4:30 a.m. According to Vicki Gavalas, the Clayton school system’s Director of Communications, “We watched several different weather forecasts including the local, the Weather Channel, the National Weather Service. And when those forecasts started to gel a little bit, it became easier for us to make a decision.”

In DeKalb County, six students had to spend the night at school, but DeKalb fared better than many other metro school systems when it came to getting students home. Superintendent Michael Thurmond told WABE, “Really the key, when we decided early dismissal, in the past we had instructed parents to pick up children up at a specific time. This time we directed and informed our parents that they could pick their children up at any time.”

Gwinnett County students finished the school day Tuesday, and no students had to spend the night at school.

While no school system representatives we talked to mentioned trying to getting help from the state to make its decisions, Clayton County’s Vicki Gavalas was receptive to the idea of sharing information. “A word from the governor or other emergency folks saying, ‘Hey guys, this looks like it’s really going to be bad. We need your cooperation’: I am absolutely sure we would have taken that into consideration.”

DeKalb County Superintendent Thurmond also hopes for better communication in the future. “Hopefully, coming out of this, we’ll be able to better coordinate,” said Thurmond. “And really think about it now. It wasn’t initially, anyway, wasn’t the snow. It was the traffic. The traffic is what really, in many ways, prevented school buses from being able to get back to school to pick up the kids.”

More than 300 students spent the night Tuesday in Cobb County schools, and dozens of Fulton County students spent the night in schools or on buses. Neither of those school systems made representatives available for our story.