Closing school is not a decision that we make lightly. With each weather event, there are a number of factors and considerations as well as communication with a variety of local leaders, discussions with other school officials as well as conversations within our cluster. At the heart of each of these decisions is the safety of your children, our staff, and the community at large. We know how disruptive changes to the schedule and calendar are and we appreciate your understanding and support.
For this past storm, we were fortunate to have the guidance of our entire emergency management team. These individuals worked non-stop throughout the entirety of the storm to ensure JCP&L was being held accountable and to keep track of all road closures and power outages.
I have a deep admiration for our emergency management team including our OEM site manager, our township officials, our local police and ambulance, and our local fire departments. They worked to keep all of us safe.
This past week was an anomaly, one we did not plan for when developing our school calendar. As you know, our school gets very hot in the summer months, as such we build in four days in order to prioritize an early graduation date and an early end to the school year. That said, we are now in a position to either take 5 days from Spring Break as originally planned, or to move our graduation date and keep our Spring Break wholly or partially intact.
I am reaching out to you now to get information from you, our parent community, on your priorities and desires. While I will ultimately be making a recommendation to our Board of Education, I would very much like to have more data from you, our community, before I make that recommendation.
We will also be sharing this survey with our student leadership team and eliciting responses from them on behalf of their classmates. We hope to gain a clear picture of priorities within our entire community.
We will be tracking responses and placing a priority on those parents who have seniors graduating this year. While I know there have been some questions regarding the time of this year’s graduation, please know that the decision has already been made for an afternoon graduation, the time will not change based on the results of this survey. That decision was also made with the safety and well-being of our students and families, specifically with regard to the threat of early evening thunderstorms. An afternoon graduation reduces that threat and allows for greater flexibility should a storm arise, hopefully forever avoiding an indoor graduation ceremony.
Thank you again for your understanding and support as we make every effort to keep our school community safe.
