Inside SFPS
Inside SFPS
Episode 16: Inclement Weather Protocols (feat. Superintendent Hilario “Larry” Chavez)
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On this episode of Inside SFPS, Superintendent Hilario "Larry" Chavez describes the many ways to find out about school delays, closures, and general information for inclement weather as it pertains to Santa Fe Public Schools for students, parents, and staff.
Welcome back to another episode of Inside SFPS. My name is Cody Zanarski, Public Information Officer with Santa Fe Public Schools, and today I am joined once again by Superintendent Larry Chavez. Superintendent, how are you today? I'm doing well, Cody. How are you? I'm doing good. We are here. We're doing a little bit of a different episode with winter coming around now. Uh fall's ending. Winter is here. That means inclement weather is on its way. We're actually recording this on the Monday before this comes out, right after there was some snowfall here in Santa Fe. So we want to go over some of our protocols, what the district does for inclement weather procedures, delays, closures, stuff like that. So on a day like today, inclement weather is on the way. We knew about it this weekend. What are kind of the gears and the wheels happening behind the scenes?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think this is great timing. We you and I talked about this, I think, in January, and now coming back around, just making sure that our parents, families, community, and students and staff are well aware of the process in order to call a delay or even a closure. So as you mentioned, Cody, uh we we watch and monitor the forecasts daily, and especially when there is inclement weather, such as snow predicted. And when the there's snow predicted, our district team reviews the weather forecasts daily, if not hourly. And if it's very evident that we will need to delay or close school the following day, okay, so if we're talking about today, we're talking about Tuesday, making a decision for. Temperature, especially on the roads. A delay means that the the icing or de-icing of roads, cindering of roads, and the temperatures will increase so we won't will not see ice on the roads, making it a difficult and dangerous transportation of students and uh staff to and from school. So I think that's the big difference between the two. If we're monitoring and the roads are frozen, conditions are not going to rise, then we will consider a closure. Now again, it's really based on road conditions, safety of road conditions to transport kids from home to school and back from school to home. So if you're seeing a big dump of snow during the day, the instructional day, but road temperatures are high enough where it's not gonna melt and freeze over, then we'll continue to remain in our schools as that's probably the safest environment during weather conditions rather than getting them out on the roads and trying to get them home.
SPEAKER_01One of the things kind of touching on that is you know, we'll say six inches to a foot comes down at noon. Are we gonna let kids out early? You know, are we gonna delay school or close school or release kids early just because snow dumped into the midday area?
SPEAKER_00And and that's always a question that we received in our offices and probably at our school site starts sites. So as we go back and we talk about when when students are starting to be picked up, I mean it's as early as 6.15. So as a matter of practice, once they're on the road, we will continue to move forward with the start on a normal schedule. I mean, once we move forward, our reasoning is that it's too risky to return this the kids back home. Parents are off to work, parents may be commuting. So dropping them back off where they were picked up creates a bigger risk as to is somebody home to watch and monitor them or receive them, especially for our youngest kids. So we don't want to have them walk home, run into the risk of having a locked home or can't get in and then they're freezing outside. So again, the sites, school sites are our safest location during these weather storms. And as we start going through school and you start seeing through the school day and you start seeing the the snow start to come down harder, you start to see accumulation, you know, in different areas of town or in your yard, again, it's really whether or not the roads are frozen. Right. And also whether or not the temperatures will continue to drop. And again, if we're delaying or if we're continuing to move forward without canceling school in the middle of the school day, it's really about assessing the risk. The risk factor in students, especially secondary students who drive. Is it too risky and putting them in harm's way to send them home during the middle of a snowstorm? And so rather than saying yes, go home right in the middle of the storm, visibility could be down to zero. Uh you could see snowpacked roads and the icy conditions, the safest precaution is just to remain in school, proceed as normal, and hope that the storm passes over and the temperatures rise.
SPEAKER_01And I think an important point to make is that we do give parents and guardians the option to pick up their students if they are concerned for their safety or they would prefer that they be at home and not in school. We do give parents the option to come and pick their student up in the middle of the day if they think that's what's best.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And and also just like today when we're talking about uh snow delays in different areas of town, you will see the weather conditions vary from one side to the other. Uh the area of town that we see extreme weather conditions, such as uh this morning at El Dorado, Adelaide, and some other some other school communities, Tezuke, we will also cancel or not count against a student showing up tardy. And so those tardies will will not be uh counted. We will forgive those individuals if they want to wait out the storm a little bit. Uh we understand that parents need to make this decision and what's best for their family as far as safety. And so we're understanding of that as well and want to work with the families to ensure that we want them in school, but we want them there when they feel it's safe to get them there.
SPEAKER_01When something like that happens, when the mountains, the El Dorados, the Adelais, the Tisuques are the ones getting hit with snow, like was the case this morning. What goes into that decision? Because when I was driving in um around eight o'clock, there I was driving on the south side, I was going down airport, and there wasn't anything really there. There was a little dusting on the side of the road, but for those in Adelaya, I'm assuming theirs was a different experience. So when you're making a call for a delay or for a closure, what are kind of the circumstances and the factors that go into that?
SPEAKER_00Well, on a rare occasion like today, we'll cancel or call a delay for a specific school area or school community. Uh typically we want to stay uniform because of the routes and how the routes are interconnected from one elementary to another or even to secondary. So it it really causes disruption in our transportation routes and delivery service. And what we want to do is really stay uniformed at the safest possible method that we can in in regards to getting students from home to schools. Uh in today's case, there was a power outage at Adelaide and in that school community. So rather than um having all students show up when the building was dark and cold, we did say we will call a two-hour delay for that school community, specifically because of the power outage. Uh typically, as we move through these things, we won't have those power outages, but we want to make sure our students are safe and warm. We were even looking at transporting our students from Adelaide to a neighboring elementary school who did not have the power outage that Adelaide was experiencing to ensure that they can continue with their education, but in a safe, warm, and lit environment. Now we were lucky enough that Adelaya's power was turned back on or actually, I guess, re-engaged. Um restored in the in the community as well to really start warming up the building again and having uh the lights necessary to move forward. So again, it's j it's a uh one-off uh as far as the Adelaidea two hour delay. But we want to look at it district wide and then we want to look at it school specific. And if it means that we may have to call a delay for El Dorado uh with the next storm coming in, then we'll take a look at that and and make those decisions on an individual basis. But again, it's really based on transportation of students, road conditions, temperatures, salt or cindering of the roads, and also what the forecast looks like as we move through the day.
SPEAKER_01And that's what I was just gonna say is that a lot of this is forecasting. You know, when we're looking, when we're talking at 4 30 in the morning, it's what is what are the conditions gonna be like at 8 o'clock? What are the conditions gonna be like at nine o'clock? Are they gonna be improving by 10 o'clock? Or if we were to call a delay by 10 o'clock, the roads would be safe and clear, or you know, clear enough to get students to school safely. Um and the same thing was happening this morning with Adelaya. As soon as we called the two-hour delay, we were immediately starting to look, okay, what would a closure look like? What would we need to do? Do we need to, as you mentioned, transport these kids to a different location? If the if uh power isn't restored by a certain time, we have to let families know. We have to give a certain heads up. So a lot of this is forecasting. You know, we're not meteorologists, but we're having to look at the weather and kind of predict what's going to happen to give enough time for communication, to give families enough time for planning and to see what's kind of gonna roll out.
SPEAKER_00And I just want to add, Cody, you know, we we've talked about students right now, but uh the other part of decision making uh protocols is looking at whether or not it's safe for our employees to drive to school or their workplace. It could be a district building. And so we want to make sure that uh our employees know that when we're looking at this, it's just not student-based, it's also employee-based uh decision and making sure that it's safe for them to go to school or work. But again, it it's all dependent on where you live. Uh you could be a commuter, you could live within Santa Fe, and at your home it it may be dumping, but elsewhere it is not, or your place of of work is not. So we ask supervisors to be flexible, be understanding, understand that it may take a little more time to get to work if you live in a area of town or a a commuter and you have snow on your way to work. So it's it's all these challenges. And you know, winter used to be my favorite, my favorite season until I became superintendent. And I cannot wait for winter to end. Calling snow days, looking at weather reports, sleepless nights all goes into these winter months. But again, we want to make sure our staff, our students are safe. They're safe and warm in our school buildings, and also it's safe for them to commute to school and then back home. So that's always, always at the forefront of making these decisions.
SPEAKER_01One of the other things, too, just piggybacking off of that, that I want to mention is that when we do close school, the whole district doesn't close. It's just the school site. I don't know. I mean, in my three years, I can't think of a time when the district closed as well. So for any employees that are listening that are district personnel, when we do close schools, we're closing schools, school site personnel, stuff like that. But any district site personnel would still report to work that day.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I just want to, you know, reiterate what we mentioned earlier. Ten o'clock the night before, important time frame to to remember because that will be the first kind of trigger, if you want to call it that, on whether or not we're gonna call a delay or a closure. If you do not hear from us at 10 o'clock at night, or you don't see it reported on the news, social media, our website, then the next time is gonna be six in the morning. We're hoping no later than six to make a decision. But again, if you don't hear from the district by six o'clock in the morning, that means we are moving forward as schedule. And Cody, uh, if I leave anything out, please add in. I know we send it to the news stations, correct. We put post it on our our website and also the school's website, correct, social media platforms, and then we'll even send out remind messages. So these are all different ways for us to communicate whether or not um you're gonna have a delay or closure. Now remember, if you don't receive any of these messages, that means we're we're moving forward as is.
SPEAKER_01Or if you don't receive those messages, one check your remind, make sure your contact information is up to date. You know, with the inclement weather season coming up, getting these messages to you is even more important than ever. So please check your remind, log into your remind, make sure your contact information is up to date. Check to make sure that your text and email notifications are on. Um, I know that is something that um I've been working with some parents about and some schools about. Make sure that you go into your settings, your notifications, and make sure that the little bell is on next to your text and email notifications to make sure you are getting those text or emails. If you do not receive a message from us, check our Facebook. Our Facebook um will have the update. Check our website when you log into the website on a day of maybe inclement weather. You should see a big pop-up that says schools are two-hour delay or at the closure. If there is no pop-up, if there is no kind of big thing stopping you when you get into the website, school's on as normal. And then you can check the news stations, K O A T, K R Q E, K O B. I think some of the news station or the radio stations in town, K Suave, KSFR, pick it up. Um, so there's there's so many ways to figure out what is going on at the school. So if you don't hear from us or check the news at 10 o'clock, check our website, check our Facebook, any of our social media platforms. If you don't say anything by 10, you know, get up a little bit early the next morning, look to see if you have a message from us. If not, you know, check the website, pretty much check any platform where you can find the district. If if you know the district somewhere, we're probably putting that message out about uh inclement weather delays or closures.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you, Cody. And I agree a hundred percent. Just keep checking. Um and again, those times are 10 o'clock the previous night, six o'clock in the morning the day of. And then if you don't see any messages going out, it's just proceeding as scheduled.
SPEAKER_01Yep. And one of the other things too, we've had one or two instances of this, so I think it's important to bring up is the case of where we call a delay to see if the weather conditions improve, and by seven or eight o'clock, we notice that those conditions are not improving, so then we close for the rest of the day. Talk a little bit about what we do in a situation like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Cody, and thanks for bringing that up. So we we mentioned uh the 10 p.m., the 6 a.m. But also we may be calling the delay, as you mentioned, to see if the temperatures rise, see if road conditions improve. If that is not the case, then by eight o'clock, we're gonna call uh another delay or closure as we move forward. Um even at 8 o'clock, we will say proceeding as is to include the two-hour delay. So at 8 o'clock is uh the last message that comes out, and it's really to confirm that we will open two hours later or we will close for the rest of the day. So I guess that's a third time that you need to be monitoring not only our social media platforms or my messages, but our websites, because uh those are the three time frames that we or uh triggers that we have in place in order to notify our community.
SPEAKER_01One of the things that I want to check with you to see if we want to bring up when we're in the middle of calling a delay or you know, looking at the weather, it's important to note that the reception desk, that 467-2000 number that people reach out to, uh, no one is monitoring the phone that early in the morning. No one is reporting to work at that time. So if you are trying to call us at 6 30, 7 o'clock to see, hey, our school's closed, hey, we don't see a message. There's no one at the reception desk. So, you know, we're not ignoring you, we're not trying to throw you in all different directions. We just no one's monitoring the phone. And then if there is a two-hour delay, which pushes the start of school past 10 o'clock, employees are again giving that leeway for employees. Some site employees may not be reporting right at eight o'clock or nine o'clock, maybe closer towards 9 30. So again, someone may not be monitoring that line. So if you are looking to see if schools are closed, if there is a delay, please check the the other resources that we mentioned, remind messages, social media, Facebook and Twitter, uh, our websites, the school websites will have it, and the news stations. So just want to make sure that's the same.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, good point, Cody. Um, because I get in pretty early, no matter if there's snow or not, and I hear the phones uh going off. So I think just to reiterate, check social media, check our websites, check your remind messages. That's where you will be first notified to include TV stations and the local radio stations. If you're calling the the front desk to find out whether or not there's a delay, cancellation, or we're moving forward as scheduled, and it's before eight o'clock, then you will probably not re reach someone. And it's just uh better, and you would receive the information a lot quicker by going through these other means that we've just discussed.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely awesome. Thank you so much, Superintendent, for joining us. Hopefully, we have a fairly mild and uneventful winter. I hope that's the case uh based on our two snow showers, storms, whatever you want to call it in the before the middle of November is hope uh not looking good for us. So thank you for joining us. I look forward to it.
SPEAKER_00I appreciate it, Cody. Thank you. And uh, we appreciate everyone else listening to Insight SFPS.
