It has been another April with less-than-ideal weather and that has forced school division officials to call off classes several times.

In the Turtle Mountain School Division (TMSD)other issues like water outages and even a power outage have kept administrators on their toes.

 

Tyler Shiels is Supervisor of Maintenance and Transportation with the TMSD. “We’ve had a pretty good year when it comes to cancellations. We’ve had a few cancellations of course when buses and schools haven’t been able to run. We try to do what’s right at the time and so far it has worked out pretty well for us.”

Shiels adds they have policies and protocols to guide them through the various storms and other factors that can lead to changing the regular school day.

 

“We’ve had some struggles in April with school closures whether it’s water main breaks like what happened twice in Boissevain because we can’t run our school without water and now the winter storm that hit this past week. We had a similar situation last year because we had to close the schools on April 17th and 18th because of a snowstorm,” said Shiels.

When conditions deteriorate the superintendent and transportation superior each head out to check road conditions around 5:30 in the morning and then make a decision shortly after 6:00 am whether or not buses should be on the roads.

“We make a decision based on what’s safest for our students and staff and we try to make that decision by around 6:20 am so we can let everyone know using local radio stations and social media and our website.”

 

Tyler Shiels says people quite often question their decisions whether they cancel classes or don’t cancel them. “Our best interest is always with students and staff. We’d rather cancel buses and classes in the event of safety rather than taking a chance and ending up in an emergency situation.