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RANKIN INLET
The recent run of extremely cold temperatures followed by blizzard conditions resulted in a number of school closures across the Kivalliq.

Rankin Inlet DEA chair Stan Anderson said student safety is always the primary concern when deciding to close schools due to bad weather. - NNSL file photo

And lost school days can cause problems on a number of different fronts.

School policy dictates three of four conditions must be met to close a school.

The conditions are: temperatures dropping to -50 C or below with the windchill factor, winds reaching sustained speeds of 50 km/h or higher, visibility dropping to 200 metres or less and school buses being kept off the road.

Rankin Inlet district education authority (DEA) chairperson Stan Anderson said when the weather is questionable, he'll normally hear from a school principal early in the morning with an update and recommendation.

He said there are times when one condition becomes so severe, a school will close without three of them being met.

"The past couple of instances in Rankin, when it reached -62 C and was forecast to drop further to -64 C, we closed even though we were only meeting two of the four conditions," said Anderson.

"With the temps at -62 C and the bus not running, we decided to err on the side of caution because we didn't want some sort of tragedy to happen with someone walking to school in that kind of cold."

Anderson said there are times he has to deal with angry parents, but, for the most part, they just want to know why the school was, or wasn't, closed.

He said you rarely make everyone happy with a decision.

"The overriding concern is the safety of the children, so, we'll take the heat if it turns out we made a bad call when we think it's going to blizzard, but it ends up not quite meeting the criteria.

"When it comes to the safety of the children, we'd rather err on the side of caution every time.

"On days we do stay open because the criteria isn't quite being met, it's always the parents' discretion to keep their kids at home if they feel we should have closed.

"If they do keep their kids home, all they have to do is contact the school and the child won't be marked absent."

Problems can arise during years when bad weather causes multiple school closures.

Anderson said there are about six days a year built into the school calendar for the necessary hours of instruction to still be met, even if the school closes that often.

He said if the days surpass that number, then the DEA has to start thinking about how to ensure the students receive the number of instructional hours they need.

"If we reach the point where our administrators feel there isn't enough time to accomplish everything that needs to be done, then we would look at extending the hours of the school day or adding a few days at the end of the year.

"We could also, in a worst-case scenario, take away a couple of the teacher's instructional days they set aside for training and development."

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