School board set to debate snow days
Posted Oct 26, 2011 04:57:22 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Halifax Regional School Board will debate the hotly contested issue of when to close its schools due to bad weather conditions.
Member David Cameron will table a motion to keep schools open and staffed except in the most extreme winter weather.
He tells News 95.7 he’d also like to see decisions on closing schools when buses aren’t running made for each family of schools – not across the board.
“In rural areas where students are bussed, I understand when the buses can’t run, there aren’t any kids to go to school,” Cameron told the Rick Howe Show, Tuesday. “In the city, however, that’s not the case. The vast majority of students walk to school.”
Cameron says when urban schools close but conditions are mild enough for students to walk to school, those students are losing valuable learning time simply because it’s more convenient for the board to close all schools instead of only certain families of schools.
“The other part of it is to recognize that there are, in fact, different communities in HRM and we ought to treat them accordingly,” he said.
The proposal being presented at tonight’s meeting will treat school closures as the exception rather than the rule when there is inclement weather.
