For schools, snow days can be a tough call

School superintendents across the region awoke before dawn Friday knowing that they would have to make one of their most controversial calls: Snow day? Or not?

On the day of the first real snowfall of the season, most superintendents in the Philadelphia suburbs elected to use a snow day, although some schools in South Jersey, particularly in Camden County, stayed open.

And then there was the Philadelphia School District. It made the least popular decision of all: opening the schools and then deciding to send students home at noon.

"Why didn't they just make the decision to close?" said Aissia Richardson of West Philadelphia, who had to scramble to make arrangements for her 10-year-old daughter, a fifth grader at Girard Academic Music Program in South Philadelphia.

On Friday, Fred Farlino, the district's interim chief operating officer, defended the decision. He said the district decided about 4:45 a.m. to open schools based on road-condition and weather reports that initially called for an accumulation of one to two inches of snow in the city. The decision was made in consultation with the city and officials at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, he said.

"At the time the decision was made, we went with the best information we had," he said.

Farlino said a changing forecast and a winter storm warning issued by the National Weather Service at 8 a.m. prompted the district to announce an unusual midday closing. As it turned out, the icy conditions were milder than had been feared.

"The district, as a rule, does not like to do noon dismissals," he said. "We know, certainly, that parents are working and we are dismissing kids to homes that may not have adult supervision."

With the worsening weather forecast, he said, the district decided to dismiss early based on concern about its ability to get students home safely at the end of the day.

The district has an automatic phone dialing system, but he said it is not used to contact parents in weather emergencies. He said the district relied on news media to get the word out.

"This was very disruptive for a lot of people," said Helen Gym of Parents United for Public Education. Her group would take up the district's lack of a system to notify parents, she said.

Elsewhere in the region, many districts activated their notification systems after superintendents decided well before dawn whether to close schools.

As usual, the superintendents of Haddon Township, Haddon Heights, Collingswood and Audubon - all in Camden County - consulted early and decided to stay open, according to Mark Raivetz, superintendent of the Haddon Township district.

"Being a superintendent is a lonely job. We like to talk to each other and make the decision together," he said.

Virtually all school districts in the Pennsylvania suburbs were closed yesterday because of the snow and the threat of slick, icy roads in the afternoon.

Still, it wasn't an easy call, said Richard McAdams, the interim superintendent in Delaware County's Radnor School District.

On a morning like this one, when snow threatens, and especially on a day when it's not clear how much is going to fall and how bad it might get, McAdams said, his day starts between 3 and 4 a.m., when he consults forecasts and checks in with the district's transportation director.

Not only did he have to worry about the buses and slippery conditions for students waiting for a bus and getting off buses in the afternoon, McAdams said, but there also were high school drivers to worry about, too. "These are new drivers - 200 to 300 of them - and they may never have driven in snow before," he said. "I've got to think about that, too."

By just before 5 a.m., McAdams had learned from other superintendents that all Chester County and Delaware County districts were closing.

An automated phone system called all 2,200 student homes in the 3,600-student district, letting parents know by about 5:15 a.m. that school was off.

Putting it all together, he said, canceling school "was the prudent thing to do."

Still, he said, he realized "these are all projections - if it goes one or two degrees one way or the other, it can change. I have no way of knowing; it's like trying to solve an equation with many variables, only they keep changing all the time."

Deciding when to close schools can be tough. Raivetz of Haddon Township said: "You want to be buried in snow so that it's a no-brainer."

"There are great parts of being a superintendent, and there are days like this when you have to make a decision and people don't like it," he added.

Parents took the closings in stride - some reveled in it.

Uwchlan resident Jocelyn Zinni-Leonetti, the mother of two middle school students in Chester County's Downingtown Area School District, said that she was able to work from home. "I'm working double duty today," she said.

Zinni-Leonetti said she trusted the 11,730-student district to make the right call, and agreed with the decision. At 2 p.m. she said: "The plows just came through here an hour ago, so the buses would have had a hard time getting through here."

Still, because students were just coming back from a nine-day strike in late January and early February, she said, "this is hurting them academically. It's like two winter holidays; they are totally out of rhythm."

Judy Saunders, the mother of an elementary and a middle school student in Delaware County's Penn-Delco School District, said she was delighted. She had already planned a day off work to accompany a field trip. "I'm so much a kid at heart, I really want snow days," she said. "So far, it's been all snowmen and snow forts and hot chocolate. I feel like they should call one even in the spring."

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