The ‘balancing act’ of declaring snow days at Nova Scotia schools

HALIFAX — School boards in Nova Scotia say much goes into deciding if students should stay home due to nasty weather — and say they don’t track complaints from disgruntled parents who think they made the wrong call.

“It’s a balancing act, but obviously safety is our primary consideration,” Deanna Gillis, spokeswoman for the Strait Regional School Board, said Thursday. “We want kids in class as much as possible, but we will always err on the side of safety in making our decision.”

The provincial government increased the school year from 190 days to 195 days more than four decades ago, to anticipate an average of five storm days per school year.

The Halifax Regional School Board has only surpassed that number twice in the past 20 years: Schools across the board were shut five-and-a-half days in the 2014-15 school year, and six days in 2007-08.

Elsewhere in the province — especially in rural areas where students can live dozens of kilometres from school — cancellations appear to be more frequent.

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Gillis said the Strait board, which has more than 6,000 students in 20 schools, only closed schools four times last year, but they were closed nine days in 2014-15 and 11.5 days in 2013-14.

Between the 1996-97 school year and 2007-08, Annapolis Valley Regional School Board schools were closed an average of 8.3 days, while schools in the Tri-County Regional School Board were shuttered an average of 7.3 days.

All of the Halifax school board’s 136 schools were shut Thursday due to “impending weather,” confounding some parents who looked out their windows to find clear roads and sidewalks.

“It’s not cold. It’s not snowing. I see blue sky. Streets are clear. Why is school cancelled?” tweeted a person under the handle @JoeyArchibald.

But by early Thursday afternoon, large snowflakes were blanketing the ground and temperatures were dropping, causing messy driving conditions. Halifax Regional Police reported a number of weather-related accidents.

Halifax’s board gathers information from a variety of sources beginning at 4:30 a.m. Those include forecasts from a weather consulting service, transportation staff, bus companies, other local weather services and a local meteorologist, said board spokesman Doug Hadley.

“Based on these multiple sources of information that we gather, our staff then makes a recommendation to our superintendent as to what the outcome should be,” said Hadley.

The decision is ideally made before 6:30 a.m., and ultimately decided by the superintendent.

“Weather conditions in Nova Scotia can change very quickly. If you’ve made a decision at 6 a.m. based on a forecast, it could very well change… by mid-morning.”

Several school boards said they often receive complaints from parents, but they do not track those concerns.

“On the days where it’s a difficult decision, we do tend to receive parents’ concerns. We don’t keep a formal record of them, but we do respond to them as they come in,” said Kristen Loyst of the Annapolis Valley Regional School Board, where 13,000 students attend 41 schools.

“But we understand that parents are guardians are looking out for their kids both in terms of safety but also wanting their kids to receive in-class instruction.”

The provincial Education Department said Thursday it leaves snow-day considerations to the boards.

“The regional school boards are in the best position to understand local conditions and to make those decisions for their regions,” said spokeswoman Heather Fairbairn.

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Aly Thomson, The Canadian Press