Will Kane County Schools Be Closed or Open?
So, will your school be closed or open Friday?
The question is still up for grabs as of 4 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 15. One reason for that is school officials often wait until the wee hours of the morning to make a decision on whether schools will be open or closed — although that post-midnight decision-making usually has to do with a snow event rather than extreme cold temperatures.
Another reason is that school districts generally don’t say when school is open — for the most part, parents are asked to assume school is open unless they hear otherwise. Schools have so many ways to communicate these days — websites, Facebook, Twitter, e-blasts, robo-calls, radio and television outlets — that parents have a pretty good chance of finding the breaking news.
East Aurora School District 131 classes were cancelled Thursday (Dec. 15, 2016) due to the extreme cold, while the remainder of Kane County public school districts were open.
That’s not in any way a criticism of East, by the way. One of the reasons East Aurora School District 131 is more likely to close schools due to extreme cold is that students must walk or get rides to school — there is no busing program at East.
East Aurora School District also does a pretty good job letting residents know about school closings in a timely manner. The news about today’s (Thursday, Dec. 15, 216) closing was posted on the district’s website at 3:39 p.m. Wednesday, according to the time stamp on the post. The post was up on the district’s Facebook page at 3:28 p.m. Wednesday, according to the time stamp.
With social media, school districts are able to offer reminders that school is a “go” when extreme weather is imminent. St. Charles School District 303, for example, did a nice job letting parents know that school would be open on Thursday. In a Wednesday afternoon post on Facebook under the heading “A WORD ON THE WEATHER,” the district said schools would be open and reminded parents to make sure kids were dressed appropriately.
The previous nine paragraphs are a long way of saying that all Kane County public schools likely will be open Friday, Dec. 16, 2016, considering that the weather is expected to be less cold than it was today and the expected snow is only about 2 inches, according to the National Weather Service Chicago.
That said, it might be a good idea to check your local school district’s website or social media page first thing tomorrow morning.
