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Rare snow day extends schools' school break
(by Sue Reid - January 07, 2010)
Rare snow day extends schools' school break
By SUE HOFFMAN
Solon students enjoyed an extended winter break Monday when more than a foot of snow closed schools.
Students had been scheduled to return to school after their two-week vacation. However, the storm, which dumped nearly knee-deep snow through Solon by Monday morning, delayed their return until Tuesday.
"We had called the service department around 4 a.m.," Assistant Superintendent Thomas W. Stupica said. "They were having a tough time keeping up the main roads and hadn't been able to do all the side streets. There was a foot of snow in some of the cul-de-sacs," which had not yet been plowed.
There was also the question of the sidewalks, Mr. Stupica said. There were 15 to 18 inches of snow on some of them, he said.
The prediction was that the snow wasn't going to stop, he said. "With the amount of snow on the ground and what was coming, we realized it was hard to keep up," he said.
"There was so much snow, that we were having a hard time keeping up with the parking lots." Mr. Stupica said, as soon as the lots were plowed, they had to be cleared again. "We had to plow the parking lots again this morning," he said Tuesday.
Buses were slightly delayed Tuesday by the continued snowfall and some absences of bus drivers, Mr. Stupica said. "We did as well as we could," he said.
Mr. Stupica said the Solon School District found itself in an unusual position of closing when the Orange, Mayfield and Bedford districts did not. The other districts did not have the heavy snowfall that Solon did, he said. "When we checked out Solon, we realized it was so bad." He said the storm seemed to follow a path along the Route 422 freeway, causing Aurora schools to close as well.
"Most everything was open, but it was horrible here," said School Superintendent Joseph V. Regano. Nicknamed "No Snow, Joe" because of the district's few snow closings during his tenure, Mr. Regano said the district rarely has used the number of "calamity days" allowed by the state.
This year, the state has allotted three calamity days, instead of the five allowed in previous years. It appears that the Solon School District, which has an additional day of instruction built into its 186-school-day schedule, has three more calamity days during the current school year before having to make them up in June, administrators said. Further clarification of calamity days will be coming from the state, they said.
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