TULSA, Okla. — Out of nearly 130 schools that reported changes to their daily schedules due to winter weather, 36 took a virtual day instead of a traditional snow day.
Inola Public Schools was one of those.
Superintendent Jeff Unrau said they made the call around 4:30 AM. It ultimately came down to unsafe road conditions that put parents, teachers, and staff at risk.
“We feel like, if we can have school today in a distance setting, it’s more beneficial to the kids than to have a day or two disruption and now we’ve thrown off the whole routine," said Unrau.
Because they saw the weather coming, the staff and students at Inola were given plenty of time to get lesson plans and materials in place for any mode of learning.
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Unrau said he had conversations with his team as early as the week before weather moved in. Had they not had been as forward thinking, the superintendent said a snow day would have been the only other option.
“We felt like it was the best procedure to keep the education process with as few disruptions as we can so when we do come traditionally, we can pick up and move on and we don’t have to account for the gap in instruction time,” he said. “I’m very confident in our principles having our faculty prepared. By the end of the day, we should have met everything that we would have met traditionally."
For Pryor Public Schools, it was more about the amount of classroom hours they would need to make up if they had called school off entirely.
"When we have a lot of snow like that and kids and families can get out and enjoy it, I think that's always good for everyone to take that time and have a traditional snow day," said Lisa Mueller, Superintendent of Pryor Public Schools. "Particularly on days like today when the weather isn't conducive to that, we like to go with distance learning so that we're able to continue with our normal calendar and not extend the school year."
But like Inola, road conditions and being able to get kids safely to and from school was also a concern for Mueller.
"We do have our transportation department representatives drive some of our key spots that we know are challenging for our buses, and after that assessment, we determined it wasn't safe to transport students today," she said.
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