Yours truly seldom missed school growing up, unless I was sick, which was not very often. Once my parents kept me home to sain a
catfish pond that had lost its oxygen. (Ok, so I am not sure if sain is a word or spelled correctly but I do know that you must drain a pond first to run a "sain" net through....and Dr. Google cannot help me with this because he is not nearly as sophisticated and likely never wore sain boots eather....sorry I digress). On this occasion, we had to break ice to enter...boy
I wish I were at school on that day. Now, Mrs. Wilkes on the other hand,
she never missed school...that's right, never, from kindergarten through her
senior year, she never missed a day. Instead, she got sick and injured on holidays....how timely. I guess we both loved school so much
that we decided just to stay in it.
There are days that we all need to miss,
maybe not all of the day, but come in later or leave earlier. Monday
afternoon, I worked the phones of the superintendents on either side of
us and agreed with District 3 President that we should wait until 5 AM and
participate in a phone conference, then decide when or if to go to school on Tuesday. I then alerted the
principals of that decision. That night, I worked until 10 PM at the office
making sure that we were prepared for whatever would come in the morning.
I set-out jeans, a button-up along with my trusty Dexters- that can't
be destroyed. We watched the weather until about 11 PM and then it was
lights out, flash lights by our bedsides. The weather woke us around 1:30
AM, only 3.5 hours earlier than predicted. Hmmm...I wondered, how long will
this stick around? EMA called at 4:01 AM and stated that round one had passed
and there might be a round 2 later in the afternoon. To make sure
that we were in the clear, I waited until 5:28 am to notify the principals and
the transportation supervisor that we would have a normal day. That afternoon, many schools did let out early, though we did not, as there were no storms between
the Florida and Tennessee lines.
Every year, people ask to get out early to
travel to lengthy away extracurricular events. The response is that
while this might help 30% of the schools' population, it causes 70% to find
child care or take off from work. The same would be true for a late start. Most would either
have to find child care or take a half of day of leave from work.
The bottom line is: When it is SAFE to go to
school, we will go to school. When it is not safe, we will not go to school.
