PPS shouldn’t be so close-mouthed about closing the schools

Last week the Portland Public Schools cancelled school when it got cold.  This week the district cancelled Tuesday’s classes at the last minute, catching many parents unaware.  While reading Jack’s hilarious Storm Center 9000 series (here and here are two examples), in which he mentioned this, I noticed a response from Sarah Carlin Ames, the district’s media spokesperson (the12th comment in the second link to Jack).  Ms. Ames said that the superintendent makes the decision to stay open or to close with the best information available at the time, and takes into account the fact that many children ride to school with parents who don’t know how to drive on snow and aren’t smart enough to put on chains first.  (She said it more politely than this, but that’s a fair translation.)

I don’t quarrel too much with that, but something did go wrong with how the district communicated that decision.  I had an appointment Tuesday morning that depended on whether the Portland schools were open: if they opened, then I had to be somewhere at 9:00; if they didn’t open then I didn’t have to go.  When I awoke to snow I checked the district’s website, which linked to a page of school closure information and said that Portland schools would be open.  I left Laquedem Manor at 8:00, which allowed plenty of time to get downtown. 

At 8:30, stuck on a blocked freeway on-ramp, I called in to check on the meeting, and the Able Associate (now on to bigger and better things), who has children in PPS, said that the schools were closed and I didn’t have to show up.  I got back home at 8:45 and checked the PPS website, which still said that the schools were open through its link to school closure information, and in fact didn’t say that the schools were closed until about 9:00. 

Something went wrong with the district’s internet posting.  It may be that the district relied on the pooled closure service and didn’t think to post its own bulleting until later.  It would be reasonable for PPS to post its own bulletin on its front page at the same time it sends the school closure information to the pooled closure service.