Freezing rain causing treacherous driving conditions provided an unexpected day off for tens of thousands of students across the Chatham-Kent and Sarnia-Lambton region Tuesday after the rare decision was made to close schools.
Schools in the public and both English and French Catholic school boards, along with Christian and First Nation schools, all decided to error on the side of caution and have students and staff remain at home.
“It’s an unusual event for us,” said Deb Crawford, director of education for the St. Clair Catholic District School Board of the decision to close its schools.
An email from the Lambton Kent District School Board stated: “Although it is a rare occurrence, the LKDSB has closed schools in the past due to road conditions, poor visibility, power outages or burst pipes, etc.”
Crawford couldn’t remember the last time all the schools were closed in the Catholic board and, the Lambton-Kent board said it doesn’t collective specific historical data on school closures.
Crawford said the decision to close schools is made collaboratively with the Lambton-Kent board and student transportation. The two school boards share busing for students.
She said Lambton-Kent director of education Jim Costello and Kent Orr, manager of transportation services and herself, began discussing the situation at around 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday.
“It was a difficult decision and not taken lightly,” Crawford said, adding the safety of students and staff is a priority.
She said not having the school buses run was an earlier and easier decision than making the call to close schools.
She added they would have liked to have made the closure decision earlier, but it was due to the situation being faced with the weather.
She said the weather report indicated the freezing rain was not moving away from the area and emergency services were reporting the roads were very icy and conditions were not good for driving, which had resulted in a number of crashes.
“As the morning moved on, it just seemed to become a more serious icing condition,” Crawford said.
“It just seemed to be a safer decision, overall,” she added.
Crawford said there were icy conditions last week that cancelled school buses, but the decision was made to keep the schools open.
She said some people questioned that decision not to close the schools.
Both the Catholic and public boards also cancelled the board of trustee meetings they had scheduled on Tuesday night, due to the weather conditions.
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