Days after apologizing for opening on a two-hour delay when snow predictions resulted in nothing but rain, Montgomery Co. Public Schools came under fire for opening on-time Friday, when icy roads led to crashes.
Days after issuing an apology for opening schools with a two-hour delay when snow predictions resulted in nothing more than rain, the Montgomery County Public School district came under fire for opening on-time Friday, when icy roads led to crashes — some involving county school buses.
Brigid Howe serves as the president of the Montgomery County Council of PTAs, which she said represents “well over 25,000 parents.”
Like many other parents who left blistering comments on social media, Howe told WTOP that Friday “was a really difficult morning to be on the roads,” and that the morning drive to school could have been avoided.
“I live in Wheaton, but my son is in a holding school in North Bethesda, so it was a little bit of a dicey drive,” she said.
As she drove her son to school, “I was kind of thinking to myself, ‘Wow, I wish this had been a two-hour delay. It would have made my morning a lot easier,” she said.
“When I dropped him off at his high school, the drop-off lanes weren’t clear. And there were people sliding in the drop-off lanes,” Howe added.
But Howe, who admits she really doesn’t like driving in snow, cut the school district some slack.
“This happens here every winter. There’s at least one morning or one day where we get a delay or we get a closure, and it just rains and people get very upset about it,” she said.
“And it seemed like the timing made it so that there was really no right decision to be made,” she said.
Howe wondered, as many parents did on social media, whether MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor and the decision-makers in the school district acted in response to the backlash the school system received for Tuesday’s decision to issue a two-hour delay.
“For Tuesday morning, they absolutely were hammered,” Howe said of parents’ reactions. “I can imagine that they were maybe a little bit more cautious with hitting the delay button than they might have been had Tuesday not happened.”
MCPS spokesperson Liliana Lopez said Taylor was unavailable to comment for this article.
In a statement, she added the decision to open for normal school hours Friday was made “after a thorough review of the latest weather data.”
“All indicators pointed to light snow with no expected impact to bus routes or school buildings. That is exactly what we saw this morning. Schools and offices opened safely and smoothly, and instruction and services continued. Based on the information we had, this was the right call,” she added.
Lopez acknowledged that some school buses were delayed in picking up students, and that bus operators had faced “challenges” due to icy roads.
“We recognize that weather conditions can vary significantly across Montgomery County. Please know that the priority of our school bus operators is always the safety of our students. We will be thoroughly reviewing (Friday’s) data to fully assess the true impact and identify any operational adjustments,” she wrote.
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