Lake Superior School District bus drivers upset over call to release students during winter storm
March 8, 2012 at 7:13 am in Lake County News-Chronicle
In one of the only school districts in the region that didn’t close for last Wednesday’s winter storm, Lake Superior bus drivers were faced at mid-day with news that they would be driving children home at the height of a snowfall that dumped almost 10 inches on the North Shore.
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Mr. Minkkenen was out of line, causing the drivers to be threatened with loss of their job. In this case, the drivers are the professionals–the experts. If they say it was unsafe to drive during the height of the storm, then it was unsafe. It does not matter if the school management then said the drivers should not worry, they would not bear responsibility for the decision. The drivers still had to drive the kids and would have the inner burden to bear if there were an accident, an injury or a death. If a student got killed, it would not matter whose fault it was… the student would still be dead. Goldangit, the school should have called the parents and told them the buses would be delayed until the storm abated or a means of escorting the buses coud be found. Just how dumb is this bird?
tom koehler
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Tom…
I suspect the reason for waiting to close the schools may have had a lot to do with financial considerations. The district is experiencing substantive financial challenges, to the tune of a potential operating deficit of more than $1 million, according to their projections. If financial issues were not on the minds of the folks responsible for the late closing, I don’t know what was.
The school receives an annual per student ADM amount from the state and federal governments. These amounts are contingent upon certain state and local conditions being met, and that includes a minimum number of instructional hours. The State of Minnesota has no minimum set number of days for a school year, but does require that the general state and any local conditions be met. The length of the school year to achieve these ends is set by the district.
Now, our school district is operating under a strict waiver allowing a four-day week operation. That waiver set certain standards for the district to follow. Without knowing, I am assuming the reluctance to close during the storm could have been related to these standards. Basically, the school may have been faced with having to make up a closed day or lose a daily equivalent of its funding dollars, but that might be specific to the four-day week waiver since the state no longer penalizes schools on an ADM basis for those types of issues, unless a statutory number of days is specified for certain classifications of students.
Making that day up by adding an extra day at some other point in the year may have been costly if teachers, transportation employees and administrative staff had to be paid additional amounts. I don’t know the terms of their contracts, so I’m sure of how the closures are addressed. Whatever the point, having to address any of these issues normally is always a challenge, but under the terms of the four-day week it might have been more challenging.
Please look at this link for information on the topic of school day cancellations (Click on “MARSS Memo” when the link is displayed):
http://education.state.mn.us/search?q=annual+instructional+hours&searchbutton=Go&output=xml_no_dtd&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&client=New_frontend&proxystylesheet=New_frontend&site=default_collection
Now, regardless of state closure policy, the safety of the kids and the employees should have been foremost in the mind of the person responsible for the cancellation of the school day. This is particularly true when considering the weather forecast and warnings, and the large geographic transportation area the district covers.
This is just one more example of the concern many folks have about the operational and financial aspects of the district’s functioning. There is not a lot right now that is clear and easy to understand about what happened in the snow closing incident. The incident, however, reflects a continuation of the ongoing worry over what is happening at the management level of our school system. I am open to the fact these things may be indicative of the pressures on our board and superintendent, and a further indication they may need the assistance of some outside expertise to help them address the challenges facing them.
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Mr. Broin, decisions aside on whether or not the school should have even been open, this issue is that once the school was open and kids in attendance, the school finally decided to send them home, and the drivers said it was not safe to go on the road at that particular time.
The drivers were then threatened with loss of their jobs if they did not take the kids home immediately, regardless of the driving conditions.
You are making a sound argument, but it is not connected to the central issue of this story. The issue is the conflict between the school authorities and the drivers on the safety of driving in the peak of the storm. The issue is the threats against the drivers for expressing their very legitimate concerns.
These issues do of course add to the bag of complaints against the manner in which the school system has been administered the past decade or so.
tom koehler
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Tom… I am in complete agreement with you on all your points, right from the beginning. The threat against the bus drivers was uncalled for and against good common sense, but I wasn’t up at my home there during the storm and so I don’t know details of the circumstances.
I do, however, have a lot of empathy for the circumstances the school district is in, and I can relate to the financial pressure the superintendent might be feeling, if that was his worry…appropriate or not.
So, I am in agreement with your concern, Tom
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Tom…
In addition, I do believe the central issue of the story is in fact connected to the multitude of concerns the general public has had with regard to the general operations of the district. Too many of these types of decisions certainly continue to add fuel to the necessity to refocus on the district’s priorities and general informational transparency to the public.
I know there are a number of us who would like to help, and I’m sure you are one of them?
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Wow.
Why is it that every time Mark B. says something that is accurate, informative and straight to the issues, he gets so many “thumbs down”?
I think the entrenched establishment in the area must have something to be concerned about. No wonder so many folks send their kids to the charter school and Marshall.
Mr. Koehler, I believe the man is agreeing with you 100%, and simply points to some data on the Dept of Education web site to further explain the school closing circumstances.
Those “thumbs down” folks should be happy to get a little more education, and its free at that.
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School closing circumstances were not part of the story. The story was about the bus drivers being threatened with losing their jobs. It is true that the school should not have opened at all, but it did. None of that was part of the story.
fwiw, I did not give any thumbs down to anyone about this commentary series.
I do have some issues with the way the school seems to be run, but I have no kids and so my opinion counts for little or nothing.
tom koehler
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