THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 10, 1996 TAG: 9601100647
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALETA PAYNE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
At 3:30 in the morning, with the temperature hovering in the low 20s, it's hard to tell which is darker - the night or the ice-slick asphalt.
A small group of public school employees fans out over the streets, highways and bridges of Hampton Roads, gathering the information that will decide whether the dream of every schoolchild comes true: Snow day, or school as usual.
The anxiously awaited decision - most often made by district superintendents - can send parents scrambling to patch together child care and students whooping with glee. It is based, school officials say, on the best weather and road information they can gather, some of it collected by going out in the mess themselves while everyone else is asleep.
``If you're dealing with the worst-case scenario, you can't beat first-hand knowledge,'' said Tom Gillette, director of transportation in Chesapeake.
On days when the snow starts in the wee hours, that means being on the road between 2 and 4 a.m. In most districts, a handful of school employees throughout that city checks main and back roads, school parking lots and walking paths. They communicate with each other, local police, the weather service and their counterparts in other districts. Based on their information, the superintendent will make a decision.
In Portsmouth, Assistant Superintendent Sidney J. Duck III was on the road at various times Sunday, conducting his first checks at midday and wrapping up about 3 a.m. Monday.
If the roads are frozen, the prospect of an early-morning thaw could mean delaying the start of school rather than canceling classes, said David Pace, director for transportation services in Virginia Beach. Driving around in the middle of a snowstorm in the middle of the night might not seem the safest task, but one advantage of the weather and the timing - ``You've got the road to yourself,'' Gillette said.
Norfolk officials had decided to keep schools closed by late Monday afternoon, Dale Williamson, senior director of transportation, said. While the snow had stopped falling around noon and no more was expected, temperatures remained frigid, and many roads icy.
``You just think of eight or 10 kids standing at a bus stop and you consider a bus coming in and skidding on a patch of ice and sliding into them,'' Williamson said. ``We don't like to cancel school, but we'll do it for the sake of safety.''
Because many of Suffolk's rural communities are connected by narrow, winding roads that aren't always quickly cleaned off, buses can have an especially hard time traversing them in the snow, said Transportation Supervisor Larry Garland. If the district didn't opt to close school under such conditions, he said, ``kids could be waiting for buses forever. The buses would be extremely late, and it's hard to maintain a schedule that way.''
They know that many transplanted Northerners scoff at closing schools for a couple of inches of snow, but that's the price of living in the South.
``We just don't have the sophisticated equipment and manpower Northern districts have,'' said Pace. ``If we're going to make an error, we're going to make an error in favor of the children.'' MEMO: Staff writers Jon Glass and Vanee Vines contributed to this story.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by CHRISTOPHER REDDICK, The Virginian-Pilot
When the roads are icy enough to close schools, that sets the stage
for fun. Kealton Taylor, 15, left, and his friend Daniel Dana, 15,
snowboard on a slope off Tidewater Drive on Tuesday.
KEYWORDS: WEATHER SCHOOL CLOSINGS by CNB