Dartmouth Public Schools close Friday with an end to the snow days in sight
Snow piles up beneath classroom windows at Dartmouth Middle School. Photos by Abby Van Selous
Snow piled up at Quinn Elementary.
Parking signs are half buried in the snow at Quinn Elementary.
The sidewalk near Quinn Elementary isn't fully cleared.
Snow piled up from road and parking lot clean up.
Snow piles up beneath classroom windows at Dartmouth Middle School. Photos by Abby Van Selous
Snow piled up at Quinn Elementary.
Parking signs are half buried in the snow at Quinn Elementary.
The sidewalk near Quinn Elementary isn't fully cleared.
Snow piled up from road and parking lot clean up.
What started out as a week-long winter break has extended to a two-week vacation for students in the Dartmouth Public Schools, as Friday is set to be another snow day due to the blizzard.
"We're getting our crews more time over the weekend to better prepare for a school reopening," said Superintendent June Saba-Maguire.
Currently, the plan is to return to schools on Monday and Tuesday with two-hour delays before returning to normal school days on Wednesday.
This should give the cleanup crew more time to do any "last minute cleanup the morning of" and "allow more time for the sun to come up," Saba-Maguire said, noting that some students board their buses as early as 6:20 a.m. and others walk.
While the parking lots at every school have been plowed, Saba-Maguire noted that "they don't look the same as they did when we left on Friday."
In the spaces where cars should be are snowbanks, leaving staff members — as well as student drivers at the high school — with fewer parking spaces.
"Those are the kinds of things that we consider when we think about a safe return to school," Saba-Maguire said.
The district uses 29 buses to get kids to and from school, and with the town still working on plowing and widening the streets, the district didn't want the buses to be in the way, Saba-Maguire said.
"What can happen with a bus if we started them back before we were really ready, before the roads were ready, is that we could be putting not only our students in situations where a bus might get stuck in a snowbank ... and then we've had to have a tow come and pull the bus out of the snowbank," Saba-Maguire said.
She added, "What that does is that puts strain on some of the town services and the folks that need to respond to help out."
Saba-Maguire said that community members have been "pretty accepting" and noted that people seem to understand that it's an unprecedented storm.
"We are definitely doing all that we can to make sure that our schools are ready for the safe return of our students," she said, "And I think parents and guardians appreciate that."
Saba-Maguire said that there's been "really strong collaboration" between the school district and the town administration and that the district doesn't make its decision to close "in a vacuum."
"The collaboration and the communication has been important," she said.
