School canceled due to 'absolutely treacherous' roads

Freezing rain made for plenty of happy students but some put-out parents when school was called off Tuesday morning.

Some parents, seeing no trouble with the weather, drove their children to school only to find the doors closed.

But those who live on icy country roads had no bones to pick with Flathead County Superintendent Donna Maddux.

Long before dawn, she and a team of school administrators and their bus drivers sided with the road department's emergency-travel-only advisory.

"We found roads were absolutely treacherous," Maddux said of several early morning test drives across the county.

By 5:30 or 5:45 a.m., she said, the Montana Department of Transportation, Flathead County road crew and a number of experienced bus drivers had given the administrative team all the information they needed to cancel classes for the day. Word went out to local radio stations and was posted on the Internet by 6 a.m.

"Even with chains, it was difficult to stay on the road," Maddux said. "It had snowed in the night, then it rained on top of it and it was a skating rink out there.

It wasn't until later that daylight and warmer temperatures brought considerably improved driving conditions and a good chance that school could have resumed.

Tuesday presented the perfect case for opting to simply delay the start of school, not cancel it for an entire day.

"We'll be revisiting that policy," the county superintendent said, "but we developed a policy not to delay because it causes so much confusion for a family."

With a delayed start, a projected start-up time would have to be set. Working parents may arrange for child care based on that projected time, she postulated, then have to scramble if buses still could not drive the routes by then.

But she promised it will be on the table.

"There will be a conversation about that very soon."

Despite sanding and de-icing chemicals that county road crews were applying throughout the day Tuesday, Maddux cautioned that some roads will have the same crust of ice this morning.

Parents can be prepared for either eventuality by tuning in to local radio stations or looking for school closure information on the superintendent's Web site, www.co.flathead.mt.us/schools/index.html

People also can use that Web site to e-mail comments on the delayed-start idea. They also can let their local school officials know what they think.

Making the call on whether or not to hold classes is a finely tuned process in Flathead County.

When Maddux took office 10 years ago, she began asking each of the elementary school district boards to formally give her the authority each fall to close school when the related high school district cancels classes.

When weather looks dicey, she confers with those high school administrators, their key bus drivers and road officials to make a team decision. She then puts in a call to the radio stations and has it posted on the Web site.

"It used to be more hit and miss," Maddux said of the custom that had been followed but never formalized.

"I wanted it to be uniform and I wanted the media to have a channel to get the news. I don't want them to call. I want people to listen to the radio because when we have an emergency, the radio will be their contact. They will need to have a battery-powered radio."

Although it hasn't happened yet, she said an earthquake, flash flood, disastrous fire or other natural catastrophe could take down power lines across the Flathead. Getting used to the school-cancellation procedure could train residents for such an event, she said.

"We practice this notification system so that if we ever have something really nasty," Maddux said, "we'd have the method to get this out.

"There are so many potential events that, if everybody got on the phones to verify it, they could put the system down."

She noted that, while everybody works as a team on the decision, schools are not required to follow the team's recommendation. Individual districts always could, and still can, cancel or hold classes as they see fit.

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com