Winter Weather and Your Schools

How to know whether or not your school is closed

Parents should be aware that when snow is expected overnight the VSB monitors the weather and road conditions carefully and has a thorough system in place to do an evaluation of transportation routes well before schools open in the morning.  There is also a well-established communications system in the district and between surrounding school districts.

In the unlikely event that there are any schools impacted or closed by snow, the district website and local radio stations are the best sources of information. Should there be a heavy snowfall, your best sources of information are the following radio and TV stations:

You can always check with Environment Canada for up-to-date local weather. In addition to this website, there are a few other sources for weather, driving and power outage information that the VSB is constantly monitoring.

How we make the call for power/snow closures

As the snow season is upon us, it is helpful for parents and the community to understand how we come to make calls on the closure of schools and how those calls are related to bus schedules. Each day, roughly 50,000 students trek from different parts of the city to their schools. Thousands of students travel by bus to attend school.

The departures of many of our school buses and the picking up of students in the morning are major goalposts for us.  Buses in the morning begin routes at about 6:45 a.m. and begin picking children up by about 7 AM. In the afternoon, most buses are on the road by 2:00.

If there is snowfall overnight and accumulation in the morning, we make every attempt to make a call about school closures prior to the morning pickup of children by the buses. If we do not make the call by

7 AM, then students are on their way to school and we need to be prepared to receive and care for them.  This means the decision to close schools is made well in advance of regular school hours.

It is extremely difficult for us to make a call on school closures as late as 8 AM, because it is long past the time buses have left and we have thousands of students on their way to school.

If there is snowfall accumulation during the day, we need to ensure the safe return of children home to parents.

Many parents are working and cannot pick up their children or the children are too young to be at home alone if we run buses early and we would need to contact all parents to let them know that their children are returning home early.  For these reasons we believe that it is better to keep students safely with us in our schools rather than to dismiss early from the school day. 

We would, in these cases, dismiss at our regular times and bus students home as safely as possible.

Finally, once again, if there are any concerns and we do make a call to close schools, our local radio stations are the best point of contact. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook and on our website for updates.

Parents and staff should regard these stations, as well as the district website as the source of communications for school closures due to power outage and snow.