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Snow Day Decision-Making Process and Notifying Parents

How the district decides to call a snowday

Information for Michigan Center Cardinals’ Families regarding school cancellations:

Tis the season for inclement weather, so we wanted to share some information to help assist families with details related to cancellations/early dismissal. As always, the safety of our students is our highest priority.

Decision-Making Process:

On rare occasions when there is an imminent and significant “warning” of travel difficulties during the following day’s school commute(s) caused by severe weather, we decide as a county to cancel school for the next morning. Typically, we don’t consider cancelling until the “morning of” a weather event because weather can be unpredictable. On those mornings, by 4:30 AM the Superintendent and Transportation Supervisor are communicating with countywide schools and each other frequently with the goal of assessing travel conditions to determine whether the roads are safe to travel. Key considerations include whether roads are safe to travel for buses and student-aged drivers. We typically make a decision about whether to cancel school by 5:30 AM.

There have been occasions when travel conditions deteriorate rapidly while students are present in school. In that scenario, we go through the same assessment (listed above) and determine whether it is necessary to release students early.

Notification:

Once the decision has been made to cancel or dismiss early, Michigan Center School District shares the information to the following spaces:

1. Michigan Center School District website and social media (Facebook, X, Instagram). If you ever have questions about a school cancellation, accessing one of these modes is the quickest

and most reliable.

2. Automated “All Call” Phone Call. This isn’t always the most reliable because we don’t have updated phone numbers for all our families.

3. Local Media. Once we’ve made the decision to cancel school, we share that information with all the Jackson MMG radio stations, MLive, WLNS tv, WILX tv, and Fox 47 tv.

We encourage families to review their own plans for childcare, transportation, and other arrangements in the event of weather-related schedule changes.

Thank you and Go Cardinals!