A day out of class

The region's first measurable snowfall was on the light side, only about an inch in Cape Girardeau, but that was enough to close schools.

Cape Girardeau public school officials decided early Thursday morning to cancel classes even though snow barely covered the ground in some places. Assistant superintendent Pat Fanger said she decided on a snow day after conferring with school transportation officials who checked conditions on city streets between 4 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. Fanger made the decision to cancel classes because superintendent Dr. David Scala was out of town.

"It was slick," she said of secondary city streets. They could have posed a safety problem for school buses and parents trying to transport their children to school, she said.

"We have kids that walk, which is also a concern," Fanger said. "We decided it would be better to be safe for the kids."

Most area school districts canceled classes Thursday. Many of them, such as Jackson, have bus routes that extend along rural roads where even a small amount of snow can make for treacherous driving.

That isn't the case in the Cape Girardeau School District, which is served by city streets. In recent years, Cape Girardeau public schools held classes at times when surrounding school districts shut down because of wintry weather.

But Fanger said the weather wasn't the key factor in her decision to cancel classes. "It was not so much the amount of snow but the conditions of the roads," she said.

Steve Cook, assistant director of public works for the city of Cape Girardeau, said the snow quickly became slick. "Once it packed down, you were basically dealing with a sheet of ice," he said.

City crews began clearing streets by spreading salt at 10 p.m. Wednesday. At 7 a.m. Thursday, secondary streets were still slick, Cook said, but by 9 a.m., most city streets were in good shape.

Jackson schools superintendent Dr. Ron Anderson said school officials who took to the roads in his district early Thursday found rural blacktop roads to be dangerously slick. "We never make a decision without getting out driving," he said.

Anderson said he and key administrators met at the school board office after 5 a.m. Thursday to decide on whether to have a snow day.

While many public and private schools in the region canceled classes, school was in session in Charleston, Mo., and some surrounding school districts. Superintendent Kevin Miller said only about half an inch of snow fell there.

"We have some rural routes. Everything is flat here," he said. "So we don't have any hills to deal with or anything of that nature."

Charleston roads weren't icy. Had they been, school might have been canceled, Miller said, because "buses don't go on ice."

mbliss@semissourian.com

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