The homework assignment for Monongalia County students on Tuesday, Jan. 21 was just as easy as it was serious.
Said assignment?
Do whatever you want.
Just so long as you stay indoors.
Another day of bitter cold from that Arctic vice-grip weather pattern that moved in Sunday and still isn’t letting up – prompted district officials to again cancel classes for the day.
Twenty-two of the Mountain State’s 55 county districts did the same, including Mon’s neighbors of Preston and Marion.
Another 27 counties commenced their school day with distance learning.
Tuesday’s weather also prompted Eddie Campbell Jr. to again voice a now familiar climate refrain in the face of it all.
“We have to keep our kids safe,” said Mon schools superintendent, who served a year as principal of a high school just below the Arctic Circle in Alaska before returning to his native West Virginia.
“We have to keep everybody safe. That’s the important thing.”
Monday night saw the mercury parked at the negative end of the thermometer.
And on Tuesday morning, at the time students would be gathering at the bus stop, it still hadn’t budged.
It’s not so much the snow right now, AccuWeather senior meteorologist Adam Douty said, as it is those temperatures – and the windchills they are bringing with them.
With windchills of 50 below in some places, the weather, the meteorologist noted, the weather in the extreme can be lethal, or just plain dangerous, either way.
“It will feel bitterly cold,” he said, “and anyone adventuring outside can get frostbite on exposed skin in just a matter of minutes.”
To date, Mon’s school buildings are weathering the icy onslaught, Campbell said, with no burst pipes or major HVAC issues so far, he reported.
For that, you can thank the district’s maintenance staff, he said.
“They’re unsung heroes on a good day,” Campbell said.
“They make this place run. And now they’ve been on call, 24 hours a day, seven days a week with this weather. We can’t praise them enough for what they’re doing.”
It will take some creative maintenance, the superintendent said, to sort through the rest of the school calendar in relation to those snow days – which, like Tuesday morning’s temperatures, are now on the negative side of the ledger.
The county has exhausted its official snow day allotment for the season, “but we still have plenty of options,” he said.
Options such as Feb. 10, which had been an early dismissal day for faculty development, and has been converted to a full day of instruction.
Three other such scheduled days – Feb. 24, March 14 and April 16 – could be rolled back for makeup days as well, he said.
Spring break for the district is set for April 17-21, with the last of school slotted for May 29, to meet the state-mandated 180 days of instruction.
“We could go into June if we have to,” he said.
Meanwhile, the district is also addressing an avalanche of a different kind.
Registration for July’s Summer Avalanche learning enrichment camp begins Feb. 3.
