It is something that every child dreams of during the winter – a snow day. They do come rather far and few between in Saskatchewan, as very rarely does the southern part of the province receive as much snow in one go as what fell on Weyburn last week.  

The snow, however, prompted the step of the cancellation of all school buses – rural and in-city – due to the amount of snow and how it impacted the roads and highways. While the buses were cancelled, and many parents opted to keep their children home for the day due to the conditions, the schools themselves remained open. 

“We’d like to try to ensure the schools remain open even during acts of extreme weather, provided that it’s safe for people to get there and that we have staff available within those schools to be able to supervise students,” explained Keith Keating, the Director of Education with the South East Cornerstone Public School Division.  

The biggest reason for the schools to remain open, even if the majority of the students aren’t making their way into the school, is primarily for safety concerns. Not every student may necessarily be able to stay home, or could even be en route to school when the decision is made to cancel the classes.  

“Just for safety reasons and for issues when students need to come to school, we need to make sure that we’re available as much as possible,” Keating added. “Not to say that it would never happen – the schools would close – but we try to stay open as long as we can get staff there to take care of kids.” 

As for the decision-making process for the cancellation of classes and the closure of a school, it is something that is done as a result of consultation between the senior leadership team in place at the school division level, and the people who are in the local areas, whether that is administrators at a school or superintendents in the area.  

The decision to keep a school open or not is also made independently of the decision made regarding school buses. 

“That’s determined by transportation in consultation with bus drivers in individual areas to whether or not it’s safe to drive on a particular day or it’s too cold to drive on a particular day,” Keating shared. He also pointed out that it is very rare that all of the buses within the city get cancelled due to the conditions. It is even rarer that all the in-city buses in both Weyburn and Estevan are cancelled at the same time, which is what happened last week.