Freezing rain across Pembina Hills Public Schools (PHPS) resulted in a shutdown of school buses across nearly the entire division on Dec. 10, making this the second week in a row the weather has played havoc with transportation.
PHPS trustees briefly discussed the division-wide cancellation during their Dec. 12 meeting at Busby School.
School buses ran as usual on the morning of Dec. 10, but the rain that swept the Barrhead and Westlock area made roads and sidewalks extremely slippery and unsafe.
Around 1 p.m, the division decided to declare a division-wide bus cancellation. The only area not affected by the cancellation was Swan Hills, which didn’t receive any freezing rain.
Parents were informed via notices posted at the PHPS website and Facebook, as well as other channels, that they would have to pick up their children that afternoon. Schools would remain open as late as necessary to ensure the safety of students.
A number of routes were also cancelled throughout PHPS on Dec. 11 due to the icy driving conditions, but those cancellations were made at the discretion of drivers, not the division.
Supt. David Garbutt said that some parents had criticized the division for the division-wide cancellation, arguing that putting a few school buses on the roads would have been safer than dozens of cars. Others had argued that buses shouldn’t have ran at all that day.
Garbutt said he still falls back on Pembina Hills’ system of relying on bus drivers to make the judgement call about when it’s safe to drive, as they are the best experts when it comes to their own roads and driving conditions.
“I think our system works better because there is absolutely no pressure to drive,” he said.
The only thing that was a bit awkward was that most of the highways in Pembina Hills were in decent condition by the time the call was made, Garbutt said.
That could have allowed some buses to still run, but a blanket closure was still the easier option.
“We acknowledge it was very inconvenient (for parents),” Garbutt said.
Director of transportation Shantelle Haitel noted that the drivers were “scared” to go on the roads that afternoon because of the freezing rain.
She said a blanket shutdown saved Pembina Hills time and money, and it also prevented stress on their bus drivers.
Trustees were supportive of the decision. Board chair Jennifer Tuininga said she had gone out in the afternoon and the roads near her home were basically a “skating rink.”
Noting that driving was dangerous enough in a car, she said she couldn’t imagine how unsafe it would have been in a bus.
“I think (the system) worked the way it was supposed to,” she added.
Trustee Jackie Comeau said she had seen others comment online that PHPS should have sent everyone home early on the bus anyway, but she noted that is extremely difficult, as you have to phone every single parent and inform them.
And if there’s nobody home, she noted, they can’t simply drop off an elementary student at their house and risk, say, the child slipping in the driveway and hitting their head.
“This was really a no-win situation,” Comeau said.
As noted earlier, a heavy snowfall on Dec. 2 had also resulted in 18 bus route cancellations on the Westlock side of Pembina Hills. Schools on the Barrhead side were largely unaffected.
Further information about how buses are cancelled due to inclement weather can be found at the PHPS website (www.phpschools.ca).
