Deciding whether to have school during bad weather not exact science

To close or not to close? That was the tough question facing suburban school districts early Thursday morning.

Most of them decided to close for the day, given that wind chills were expected to hit the 30-below-zero mark in some places. But many districts, like West Chicago Elementary 33 and Palatine-Schaumburg High School 211, stayed open.

Deciding whether or not to close schools because of bad weather is anything but an exact science. The safety of students is, of course, the overriding priority. District leaders also consider how a day off might disrupt the educational process and inconvenience local families.

"There's no specific formula for it," District 211 spokesman Thomas Petersen said. "We make these decisions on a case-by-case basis."

The decision-making process is fairly similar from district to district. When bad weather hits, the district's superintendent monitors weather forecasts ("When will the worst weather happen?"), talks to his or her transportation department ("Can our buses run? Are the parking lots safe?") and consults with neighboring districts ("What are our feeder schools doing?").

Some administrators, like St. Charles Unit District 303 Superintendent Don Schlomann, will even hit the streets themselves in the wee hours to experience the weather firsthand.

District leaders say they generally try to make a decision on the schools by 6 a.m.

Most suburban districts decided that the bitter cold and wind chills predicted for Thursday warranted a day off.

"Really, it was just a matter of not wanting students to be walking or waiting at bus stops when the temperature was so cold," said Tony Sanders, spokesman for Elgin Area School District U-46.

Others decided the weather and road conditions didn't pose a big enough danger to call school off for the day.

"What I was seeing was not dangerous for short-term exposure," West Chicago District 33 Superintendent Ed Leman said. "If we had conditions where the risk of frostbite could occur within 10 minutes, I would have closed schools, but that was nowhere near the case."

Warren Township High School District 121 in Gurnee kept schools open, but started the day two hours later than usual to give students and their families more time to get to school.

In District 211, the academic schedule played a role in the decision to keep schools open. This is final exam week in District 211, and the last exams of the semester were scheduled for Thursday.

"We decided that many students would like to come in and complete the exams they'd been studying for all week," Petersen said.

Families who decided to keep their children home Thursday weren't penalized, Petersen said. The district will allow those students to make up their finals next week.

By midafternoon Thursday, district leaders throughout the suburbs were already thinking about what to do about school today, when the forecast again predicts bitterly cold wind chills in the morning.

District 303 in St. Charles announced on its Web site Thursday that its schools would be open today, though it said that students who stay home will be given an excused absence. In other districts, leaders are going through the usual information-gathering and discussion processes once again.

• Daily Herald staff writers James Fuller, Jameel Naqvi, Jake Griffin and Russell Lissau contributed to this report.

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