What does the weather have to do to keep us out of school? What do we do to get a snow day?

“We want to make a decision on student safety,” Phil Warner, former Wilmington City Schools superintendent said.

Warner made a lot of decisions but perhaps one of the more important ones were on student safety. During the winter season Warner had to make the choice to keep the school open or closed for a snow day. Warner said that there’s many steps to making this decision, “We do call the National Weather Channel (NWC)…we do have access to a Doppler radar,” Warner said. In the morning around 3:30 to 4:00 Warner and a few other attendants would check the road conditions, weather reports and check the forecasts. They drove the roads to make that fate full decision that all students are wanting to here when they wake up on a cold snowy morning. Whether or not school is closed.

Warner made this decision and then notified the NWC around 5:00 to 5:30.

“We get input from the sheriff department and the city of Wilmington road crew.” These inputs are taken in consideration for the decision. Teachers say that in the morning, on the way to school they check the news often and for “black ice” on the roads.

Stephanie Manso, Spanish teacher, said that she checks “how other drivers are responding”

“Icy roads and freezing rain that causes us a lot more concern than two or three or four inches of snow without any blowing. Now two three four inches with a lot of wind and drifting is a lot of concern.” The kinds of weather that the superintendent looks for are below zero, freezing rain, fog, ice, high winds and snow. Other schools have little to no influence in the decision. Though with all the snow days comes a limit, the school can only call off five days before we have to make up additional days at the end of the year.

For more information call Wilmington High School at 937-382-6141.