Superintendent addresses inclement weather closures

“I don’t think we can talk about this enough, about our procedures for decision making around closing our schools,” he began.

District crews are driving county roads beginning at 3:30 a.m. when the forecast calls for bad weather. Communication is ongoing between the district, city and county road crews, and the Oregon Department of Transportation.

Kyle Rosselle, district transportation and safety director, and Polkinghorn are in contact by 4:30 a.m. to make a decision on whether or not schools can operate safely. Regardless of the decision, he tries to notify staff and families by 5:30 a.m.

“A lot of our staff have to be at work early, particularly our bus drivers and kitchen staff, so we make sure we get notice to them as early as we can,” he said. “If we are going to open school on time or delayed, then we initiate our custodial and maintenance crews at each building to clear parking lots, sidewalks, walkways so staff and students and visitors can park and people can safely access our buildings.”

Polkinghorn said weather conditions across Hood River County are varied.

“We have to be able to get students to their neighborhood school safely and we have to be able to get students from all corners of our county to HRVHS (Hood River Valley High School) as well,” he said. “We have one high school in this district and weather patterns and road conditions in Parkdale and Cascade Locks and out in Dee, up in Kingsley and Odell are oftentimes very different from each other and very different from the weather and road conditions in the City of Hood River … and we have to take all of this into consideration when we’re making decisions about inclement weather closures or delays.”

He ended by thanking maintenance, custodial and transportation staff. “When the snow is falling, when the roads are icy, they’re out there doing their best to assess our road conditions, plow parking lots and bus turnarounds, shovel sidewalks and walkways, put de-icing down, so that if we can open schools, we can do so safely. I want to thank them for their hard work.”