NICHOLASVILLE, Ky. (LEX 18) — It took only until her first winter break as a superintendent to realize that a winter weather event might be the job’s most challenging task.
“It’s not easy,” Sara Crum said from her office in Jessamine County, which sits a stone’s throw away from all the district’s schools.
Once the snow and ice, and then more snow began to fall on Sunday January 5th, Crum knew there was never going to be a back-to-school plan that would pacify everyone, so she and her team devised the one that would benefit the majority, while ensuring safety for the everyone.
“We started brainstorming ways that we could use district vehicles to pick students up if the parents were ok with that,” she explained since the smaller vans could navigate certain roads that the larger buses might not be able to handle.
“We began asking parents if they could drop off for a couple of days,” Crum added of this alternate plan, which also included excusing absences beginning Tuesday of this week for those who live in areas that are still unsafe and difficult to negotiate.
“The goal was to not forget anybody by differentiating for people who had different needs,” she said of the plan that was not a one-size-fits-all. The students who can’t be there this week are having assignments delivered via email, while the younger students who remain homebound have workbooks that went home with them during the break.
So far, Crum said this plan has been working. The attendance rate is in the high 90 percent range, she got the kids back into the buildings two days before the Fayette County public schools, and she knows this is what the parents and students in the district wanted after, what turned out to be, a three-week holiday break.
“We’re happy to have the kids back,” she said. “We’ve got happy kids, smiling faces, and happy parents and teachers, so it was worth it,” she continued before alluding to the many students who need to be in school for their counseling services or for the hot meals that are provided. For district officials, classroom time is only one part of the overall equation.
Of course, there was a risk involved with this too, because at the end of the day, should something happen to a child in transit due to weather or road conditions, there’s no one in the county who’d feel worse about it than the new superintendent.
“Me, yes, that’s absolutely right. And we weighed all of that, we really did,” Crum said of the team effort that went into every aspect of implementing their alternate plan.
