How snow days are called

Have you ever wondered who calls snow days for Pccs schools? Well, snow days are called by the superintendent or the designee, Kurt Tyszkiewicz, assistant superintendent. 

Mr. Tyszkiewicz normally makes the decision about 4:30 am. The call has to happen before 5:00 am, or it is too late. Otherwise, kids will be up and getting ready for school and about to leave, but then they call the snow day, so kids and parents have to know ahead of time. 

 Snow days are communicated to the TV stations and radio stations by Nick Brandon. Mr. Brandon sends out a phone blast, emails, updates websites, etc for students, staff, and parents.

Will we have to do online learning when it’s a snowy day?  Mr. Smiley says no. “I think, no. For the first 6 snow days, you are allowed to have six snow days before you have to make school up, but if there are more than 6, then we could start to do online learning to avoid having to make up a day in June. “

What about cold days?  It has to be  -20 below wind chill for the temperature for school to be canceled. There isn’t a set number for snow. It just depends on how dangerous the sidewalk and road are. 

How students In the past would find out about snow days was by looking on the news and there would be a strip at the bottom saying these kids will be out for today, because of the weather. Keep in mind kids would be sitting there forever waiting for their school to finally come up on the strip, because first, it has to go through all of the other schools until it finally gets to W (for Wayne County) in the alphabet.

Once we find out there is a snow day, Mr. Smiley gets a call and then he has to call Mrs. Kulczycki. 

As you can see a lot of planning and time goes into calling a snow day. Fingers crossed that we will have lots of snow days soon!