A sneaky spring storm throws us out of balance. We have dealt with snow storm warning's and watch's for weeks, now with seemingly no advanced warning we are dealing with a lot of snow, closures and once again confusion with the Poudre School Districts approach to snow days.

snow day
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Before you get all exhausted from frustration, remember a few thing's; decisions about school closures are typically made by 5:30am on the day in question, the decision to change up a school day comes in three forms, delay all together, late start or early release and that the PSD tries to make the best decision for the kids safety and education (this is what I believe personally).

On a day like today it is difficult to make the right decision, at 5:30 this morning it didn't look like it was bad at all and our forecast was relatively mild at this part of the day. It wasn't till shortly after the decision to send the high school students (elementary and junior high kids already had the day off for a teacher in-service day) off to school was made that things went from mild to 'Holy Snow, Batman'!

It has been hit and miss with the weather forecast for a while now, remember the Colorado joke, if there is a 10% of serious weather vs 80% chance its likely to happen the lower the predicted percentage. Like toddlers when it comes to dinner, the weather is fickle and hard to know exactly what will happen.

As a parent, I know that it is frustrating. You get up earlier than normal on predicted snow storm days to see what you need to do for your child and in a lot of situation for 2 working parents it can be a pain in the tukus. Fortunately today the younger ones didn't have school and that was something that you had already planned on. The high school kids having to go to school only to have school canceled, I get that frustration too. (probably more than most) I would want my kiddos to be safe and if they are driving, the worry increases ten fold and therefore so does the frustration when they (PSD) make the decision to cancel school after your kiddos have already made it there safely. I get the fear, I get the frustration and I, myself have thought on more than one occasion can't they just cancel school from the gate. Why does it always have to be like pulling teeth to get them to just call a silly snow day-what does it hurt. Well, the school calendar is very organized. When the PSD creates the years calendars they do it with possible snow days in mind and other situation that will or may interrupt a school day. They publish the calendar when its completed, we know going into a school year what the perimeters are; on the edge of making you mad, how many school board meetings have you been to or petitioned them to change the way they do days off? See the calendar is created in such a way that after so many days are missed, they need to start making them up; something that throws the whole year off. I get mad too, don't get me wrong, but if we can joke about the weatherman getting the forecast wrong, why do we hold the PSD to such a higher standard?

In the end, for today, at 5:30 this morning it looked like every other "storm" and didn't seem like it would turn into what we are now dealing with. By 6:30 this morning the snow was starting to accumulate and by 10am some areas saw 6-9 inches of snow. The PSD almost immediately then decided to close campuses with regularly scheduled buses get the kiddos home.

Our weather doesn't seem to want to improve anytime soon, we have a Winter Storm Warning in effect till 6 am tomorrow morning. By tomorrow we could see 12 plus inches and the way that is coming down, I could see even more. Some of my friends have already recorded 9 inches and if this continues we could see a lot more than expected. What will the PSD do for tomorrow? Your guess is as good as mine, I'm predicting a snow day, but then again, I too have been wrong once or twice. :P

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