When snow is in the forecast, Superintendent of Schools Nathan Greenberg has to make a decision – will school be canceled or not?
“The decision is based on multiple decisions – one is the timing of the storm; two, the amount of snow; three is the condition of the roads – those are all major decisions that go into whether or not we’ll cancel school,” Greenberg said.
He said the school district checks with the Londonderry Department of Public Works and the weather forecast.
“We take all those things into account,” he said on Thursday, Jan. 2, a day when he cancelled school because of snow and extreme cold. “We generally try to make a decision between 4 and 4:30 in the morning.
“The other thing we try to take into account is that we have a number of high school kids driving to school and for a lot of them, this is the first time that they’ve ever driven in snow. We have to be careful about that too,” Greenberg said.
When school officials look at road conditions, he said, “we know that when it is 10 degrees or below, the salt doesn’t really work all that well and the road treatments don’t really work all that well.”
“(School District Business Administrator) Peter (Curro) and I talk about it, and I’ll also call a number of the other superintendents in the area so we get kind of a broader perspective, and we’ll talk to Chuck (Zappala, Buildings and Grounds Director), because the other part of it is whether or not we can get the grounds cleared for parking and people to walk, too,” Greenberg explained. “That all plays into the timing of the storm too.”