How do mistakes happen?
“Because Fairfax County encompasses approximately 400 square miles, the weather can vary significantly, as can road conditions, in different parts of the county. Often, the school system has to base its decisions on weather forecasts. This sometimes results in schools opening when the conditions are worse than anticipated and in schools closing on days when the weather ends up being not all that bad.”
— public information officer John Torre
What role does #closeFCPS play?
“I think that with the progression of Ryan McElveen’s twitter, and the threats that he’ll get to have snow days and to not have snow days, I think that creates a new inhibition on the people [whose] job is to do this, because not only are they dealing with the job of trying to figure out if it’s safe for people or not, but also they deal with the fact that if they do or don’t have a snow day, you’re gonna have like thousands of students publicly harassing you on social media. If it isn’t the right decision, you also have parents who are on social media talking about it.”
— junior Courtney Johnson
What factors impact the decision?
“We have approximately 40,000 children who walk to school each day and thousands more who walk to and from bus stops and, because of parent work schedules, many of those children do not have alternate transportation arrangements available during inclement weather. The decision to open, close or delay school is made on the best information available at the time with student safety always the first priority.”
— public information officer John Torre