Letter from the Principal - March 2019

Mona Passman, Principal
March 13, 2019

Dear Parents and Guardians:

I miss Boone and Erickson. I imagine many of you may have fond memories of them, too. For those of you who don't know them, Boone and Erickson were celebrities to school children all across Minnesota and Eastern Wisconsin, because Roger Erickson announced the weather-related school closings on their morning radio program.

I grew up in an era when the only way to receive school closing information was over WCCO Radio's Boone and Erickson Morning Show. When I was in high school, I would wake up extra early on snowy days, turn on the radio and crawl right back into bed to listen to the alphabetical listing of school closings. I attended Sleepy Eye St Mary's, so my school was one of the last schools mentioned. Woe to the student who turned on the radio after their school was announced because they had to wait for the list to be read all over again later. There were no websites, no text messages, no email, no Infinite Campus, no phone messages and no online school. Instead, a school official picked up their rotary dial phone and called the secret WCCO hotline number. On busy mornings, they might get a busy signal and - since voicemail didn't exist yet - would call again and again until they got through.

This school year will be etched in my memory in a very different way. Now that I am on the other end of these weather-related decisions, I wanted to let you know what we consider when calling off school.

Our decisions are made carefully with safety as our number one concern.

The difficult part of these decisions is timing. While weather forecasting has become more reliable, it isn't foolproof. If we call off school too early, the bad weather may not hit us. If we call it off too late, it can be inconvenient for families. We check various weather sources for winter storm warnings and dangerously cold conditions. We also carefully consider the road conditions, which can be different across the metro area. Seventy percent of our students live within a 5-mile radius of the school, so that is the primary area we consider. We also communicate with our Catholic feeder schools, other Catholic high schools, and other surrounding schools.

As soon as we have reached a decision, we communicate through Infinite Campus, text, voice and/or email, post it on the website, and notify the various media outlets.

Unfortunately, there is no perfect decision. For those less than perfect calls, I apologize. We certainly appreciate your support and feedback and will continue in our efforts to make the best decision possible under each circumstance. Finally, please know that we fully support and respect parents' decisions to keep their students home for weather-related concerns.

As for Boone and Erickson, I'm including a link to one of their last school closing announcements in 1996. (Sleepy Eye was closed. What about Cretin-Derham Hall?) As I listened to this radio archive, I realized that I might not miss these announcements as much as I miss being the kid on the receiving end of the broadcast. I imagine many parents and other school administrators share this sentiment with me.

Happy Spring!