NEWS PHOTO JEREMY APPEL
Students at George Davison School have some fun in the snow during recess Monday, Sept. 30, 2019. All Medicine Hat public and separate schools were open, despite a Sunday snow storm.
With the exception of Eagle Butte High School and the Centre for Academic and Personal Excellence charter school, all educational institutions remained open Monday, despite the late September snow storm Sunday.
Medicine Hat Catholic Board of Education superintendent Dwayne Zarichny says they have two sets of criteria to determine whether school is cancelled due to weather – whether buses are running and whether the roads are safe.
He said that in this case, Southlands Transportation decided it was safe to operate in the city.
If it hadn’t, MHCBE would send parents a notice early in the morning that classes were cancelled, Zarichny added.
The schools also must ensure that closing for the day is the safest option for their students.
“For our jurisdiction, barring a catastrophic event, the only reason the school would be closed due to inclement weather would be because the Medicine Hat city police had advised people not to travel on city streets,” said Zarichny.
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Prairie Rose School Division closed all its schools, except for Prairie Mennonite Alternative and its three Redcliff schools – I.F. Cox, Parkside and Margaret Wooding.
PRSD spokesperson Angela Baron told the News the board decided to keep those schools open because travel to them was not significantly impacted by the snow.
“They were all mostly travelling city roads,” she said, contrasting conditions with those on the highways and rural roads. “We just felt it was in the best interests of safety for staff and students to not have to travel on the highway until they had time to get them cleared.”
Eagle Butte was closed because its students come from much further than Redcliff – Schuler, Elkwater, Seven Persons, etc.
“To run the buses to Eagle Butte, which is Redcliff kids, meant only a quarter of the student population would be there,” Baron said.
The roads outside the region were in much worse condition than in the city, she added.
Medicine Hat Public School Division superintendent Mark Davidson says as a general rule, Medicine Hat’s public schools will remain open “when it is safe to operate inside the building.”
MHPSD’s policy on school closures lists “severe weather conditions” as one possible reason for a closure, in the event students’ safety is deemed at risk at the superintendent’s discretion.
“Parents always have the right to keep their children at home from school if they feel it best to do so,” Davidson added.
