Students & Severe Weather: A Fact Finder Report

It's a question that has to be asked quite often, whether or not to release students from school when severe weather hits.

So, how do school officials decide? And, does last year's storm tragedy in Enterprise effect their decision making? It remains on the hearts and minds of many school officials.

"They did exactly what they should have done, they held to their procedures," Tom Ferguson of Shelby County Schools said.

"So, things like Enterprise, we look at very seriously," Dr. Arron Moyana of Birmingham City Schools said.

A storm killed eight students when it slammed into the high school while students were in their safety positions. The question remains for school administrators: When storms roll in, when, if at all, should schools close early, dismiss on time, or hold students?

A couple of those scenarios happened to Lori Sullivan's children, an 8-year-old and an 18-year-old in Pelham area schools in the Shelby County School District. She's asked us not to identify them.

"That day, my 18-year-old son was to come home in his personal vehicle and be here in time for my third-grader to get off the bus," Sullivan said.

But Sullivan said her son never made it. While her daughter's school dismissed on time just before the May 8th storms, the storms arrived just in time to hold middle and high school students — keeping her son at school.

"By now the weather is horrible. It's raining. It's lightning, she's hysterical," Sullivan said.

Sullivan said her daughter was left out in the bad weather for several minutes without a key to the house, but a relative saved the day.

"My daughter was fine, she was able to get inside, and get into the basement like Jerry Tracey tells us to do, but I don't want this to happen on another day," Sullivan said.

Tom Ferguson is the Assistant Superintendent of Operations for the Shelby County School District.

"We try to make the best decision possible for children," Ferguson said.

He told me May 8th's storms came through during various school closing times.

"Again, at 2:40, it looked like we were going to dismiss without any incident. But all of a sudden, at 3:02, we had a tornado warning," Ferguson said.

School administrators take several factors into consideration when closing school or holding students: When will the weather arrive, will it arrive during dismissal, and will kids be on buses when it arrives?

In Birmingham, Moyana said they made a mistake of dismissing students just before a storm arrived back in 1999.

"From experience, we did that once before, we dismissed them just before the storm hit and kids were wading through storm, going to their homes. It was the worst mistake we ever did," Moyana said.

Since that incident, Birmingham now makes a decision district-wide whether it's closing early, dismissing on time, or holding students.

School officials say they watch local TV and other weather radar, but the Shelby County School District would like to see better coordination with weather professionals.

"I don't think we know, I don't think our knowledge level is such that we feel that comfortable to know a storm system is going to hit in Shelby County at 3 o'clock," Ferguson said.

After every weather event, Ferguson says the district reviews its decisions. That's good news for Lori Sullivan, who worries about next time.

"Everyone in the administration followed procedure, no one did anything wrong," Sullivan said.

Sullivan doesn't blame anyone — she just wants there to be better coordination between the schools and administration in the future, so this doesn't happen to anyone else.

The Shelby County School District is planning to make one change after last Thursday's storms: to announce, at least to principals, when the plan is to stay open during severe storms.

One other interesting note: When it comes to dismissing early, school districts also have to consider their child nutrition programs. Districts can't send children home hungry.