Board of Education meets on Nov. 26, announces monthly Best of Best award winners, discusses lack of snow day on Monday
Superintendent John Thissen discusses the snow day policy and why school was held on Monday during the Board of Education meeting. The meeting was held on Nov. 27.
The Board of Education met on Nov. 26 to discuss different topics on the agenda and award The Best of the Best awards.
This month, instructor Matt Brooks was nominated for the award along with student Olivia Goetz.
Goetz was nominated by instructor Michaela Gower.
“I nominated Olivia because she pushes herself to be the best student in the classroom every single day and she comes with a willingness and a hunger to learn,” Gower said.
Superintendent John Thissen discussed the lack of a snow day on Monday during his report of the superintendent.
“In this particular case, we ended up having a blizzard over the weekend,” Thissen said. “Which is really easy to end up saying, when you have a blizzard, that you shouldn’t have school the next day.”
Thissen said the timing of the snow determined the call.
“I assure you if the blizzard would have come just 10,12 hours later in our area there would have been no consideration of having school,” Thissen said.
Thissen recognized that there was the issue of the ice that had formed underneath the snow. He also acknowledged the lack of heat at the high school on Monday morning.
“It was mid to late morning before we were really able to get that (the heat) kicked on,” Thissen said.
Ultimately, the decision to call school comes down to the transportation direction, maintenance director, the superintendent and other superintendents in the area.
“It’s not always as simple as saying that one community, even if you’re only 10 miles away to another community, that both of them should be doing the same thing. 10 miles can make a big difference in ice or snow or whatever the conditions are.”
According to Thissen, Hays only has two and a half snow days built into the calendar and so he didn’t want to call school unless it was necessary. Otherwise, the district would have to either cut back on spring break or extend the school year if we went over that allotment later in the year.
The meeting lasted around two hours. The next meeting will be held on Dec. 17.
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Jessica M McGuire • Nov 28, 2018 at 8:21 am
“We haven’t hit winter yet”. A quote from Thissen to poorly explain his inconceivable choice to have school on Monday. Why are we obsessed with calendars instead of the safety and health of our children? Does the fact that the calendar doesn’t say it’s winter, make the blizzard we had this weekend any less real or worthy of being thoughtfully and responsibly responded to? Sending kids to school in icy conditions, putting them at risk for injury or worse and forcing them to try to learn, and the teachers to teach, when the school isn’t even safely operational because we’ve only budgeted 2 1/2 school days for snow is imbecilic. It’s Kansas, we have bad weather here. Create a realistic calendar so that we’re not forced into deciding that spring break is more important than the safety and health of the children we’re supposed to have at the forefront of every decision we make.