It’s 5 a.m. the morning after a snowstorm. You wake up wearing your pajamas inside out, having flushed ice cubes down the toilet the night before. All students await the ring of the phone to say “school is canceled’’ so they can go back to sleep.
For EL students, that call never came the Wednesday before midterms; for Salem students, it did. But with midterms only five days away and exam preparation taking over every class, most Salem students faced the choice of scrambling to make it to school in unsafe conditions or miss critical review, instead of enjoying the extra rest.
“Nobody wanted to miss midterm reviews,” junior Emily Macklin said. If Salem students were excused that morning, why wasn’t everyone?
“This has been a very weird year,” superintendent Jeffrey Newton said. Mr. Newton decides if EL will have a delay or snow day.
On one occasion where Salem had to delay but EL stayed open, “they had a power line that was down in the road with water. It was a mess… [and] a freak situation,” Mr. Newton said. So, in that case the difference in cancellation was really the only safe option.
Although it may not be common for Salem and EL to make different calls, some Salem students were still frustrated with losing the opportunity to prepare for midterms with their peers.
“Midterms are important, especially [junior] year, so it just added onto the stress, having to figure out how to get to school, because I didn’t want to miss review,” junior Nina Mckiernan said.
Macklin agreed. “I don’t have a study hall, and only two of my classes are A-level, the rest being a mix of honors, AP, and ECE. We were doing reviews in all of them, so that’s not something I wanted to miss. It’d be a lot worse if I didn’t go to school,” she said.
Some Salem students worry that if these differences continue, they will have to make up extra days at the end of the year. According to Mr. Newton, he knows that “most of them are here and in school… It hasn’t been a problem in the past. And again, it’s a rarity that this happened.” Mr. Newton assures that Salem students will not have to make up the day.
Mr. Newton wants students to know he “understands the frustration.” Making snow calls are a very stressful part of the job.
Clearly, many factors go into the decision making process, and “from 5 until 7 is a two- hour window, so a lot can change. We take it very seriously. Safety is paramount,” Mr. Newton said.
Although safety is of the utmost importance for Salem students who decided to drive into school the week before midterms, safety was questionable.
“It was definitely a little sketchy. My car was covered in ice and I could not see, so I was trying to scrape it off while running late,” Macklin said.
According to Salem superintendent Brian Hendrickson, “The cooperative agreement between Salem and ELHS requires the Salem School District to provide and manage all transportation for Salem resident East Lyme High School students. Because Salem has different geography than East Lyme, weather events impact the towns very differently,” he said.
Mr. Newton included that it’s coming up on his tenth year as superintendent, until now, “we really haven’t had problems where the two districts make a different call,” he said.
“We’re working to try to ping the weather, [and] stay aligned, keeping the safety of Salem high school students in mind…. We had some really wonky weather this year… we try and continue to work together, and hopefully we never see that again, but it could happen,” Mr. Newton said.
How exactly is a snow day called?
“It’s a process,” Mr. Newton said.
According to Mr. Newton, on the day of a storm, he gets up before 4 a.m., “and then the calls start.” First, to the superintendent of roads at the EL Public Works Department, then to the police dispatch to see if there are any reports of accidents or poor roads. EL also has a weather service that gives Mr. Newton daily reports and recommendations.
Mr. Newton will also call EL’s transportation coordinator to get a report on the buses. Then, he will talk to superintendents in surrounding areas, including superintendent of Salem, Brian Hendrickson.
I’ve got a texting chain, [and] I’ve got a phone chain,” Mr. Newton said. According to Mr. Newton, if every other town around EL is closed, school may be canceled because many staff members drive in from surrounding areas.
Mr. Newton added that “all of that has to be done before 5 a.m.”
