Sonoma County parents upset at last-minute school cancellations

Worries about flooding and the safety of students and teachers traveling to school caused Sonoma County’s largest school districts to cancel class at the last minute Thursday morning, angering many parents.

Santa Rosa City Schools, the biggest district, initially issued a notice at about 7 a.m. telling families that school was on. About an hour later, as classes were set to start and children were arriving on campuses, they issued another alert calling it off.

Petaluma City Schools informed parents of class cancellations at about the same time, with Bellevue Union and Cotati-Rohnert Park Unified, among others, canceling just before 7:30. Ultimately, only six of the county’s 40 school districts held classes Thursday. Sonoma State University, in its finals week, announced class was canceled at about 8 a.m., citing flooding. Santa Rosa Junior College closed at noon. Numerous districts, including Santa Rosa City Schools, Cotati-Rohnert Park and Petaluma City Schools announced Thursday afternoon that they would be closed Friday as well.

“I was, as you can imagine, pretty displeased at how it went,” said Rincon Valley resident Bernie Hernandez, whose children attend Maria Carrillo High School and Rincon Valley Middle School.

“They said they were doing it for the safety of children, but as it turns out, there were more kids on the street than there would have been” if they’d canceled earlier, he said.

Parent Moira Bessette pointed out that school districts around the Bay Area, including all of Marin County and the San Francisco and Oakland school districts, canceled school Wednesday in anticipation of the storm.

“I think maybe someone should have looked at the big picture and said, ‘If all other counties are canceling out of an abundance of caution, maybe we should do the same.’”

It’s doubtful the students were as irritated as their parents by the quick change of plans. Lily Gack, a junior at Santa Rosa High School, said, “I’m pretty sure every student was happy.”?Gack lives close to school so she hadn’t left home yet, but other students weren’t so lucky. Some students who don’t drive couldn’t get rides home right away, so that was a struggle for them, she said.

As far as school being canceled for Friday, Gack said, she was a little surprised because the weather didn’t seem that bad. “It’s the last day before the week of finals and I wanted to talk to teachers for review.” Fortunately, most teachers are available by email, she said.

Gack will spend part of her Friday getting ahead on her schoolwork and meeting with a study group, she said. Otherwise she is going to “treat it like a weekend.”

Sonoma County’s 40 school districts decide independently about closures based on a range of safety factors they’re experiencing in their specific areas, County Superintendent Steve Herrington said. He added the last time so many of the districts faced last-minute decisions to close school because of flood concerns was in the winter of 2005-06.

Officials at Santa Rosa, Petaluma and Cotati-Rohnert Park districts said they were communicating with each other Wednesday night and Thursday morning trying to make the best decision based on changing information about weather conditions.

Santa Rosa City Schools Superintendent Socorro Shiels said her district decided at 7:40 a.m. to close school as flood warnings came in and she heard from teachers about their difficulty getting to school safely.

“The inability of staff and students to get to school so greatly reached a tipping point that we realized we couldn’t provide adequate supervision,” she said.

In response to parents’ concerns about how the district handled the cancellation, she said, “It would be easy in hindsight to say we should have closed night before, and we will take that information to heart.” She added, “We made the decisions we could in the moment with the information we had, and as things got worse, we made the decision to call school for safety of all involved. We certainly regret any inconvenience.”

Parents had similar complaints with Petaluma City Schools and Cotati-Rohnert Park districts, which also waited to cancel classes until buses and parents were on the road and in the case of high schools, zero period had already begun.

Elissa Seals, whose daughter attends Petaluma Junior High, said she didn’t think schools necessarily should have called off class Wednesday night, as she’d rather have her daughter in school if possible. But, she said, they could have done so earlier Thursday morning, before families were already driving to school: “They waited until the very last minute.”

Petaluma teacher and teachers’ union negotiator Sandra Larsen added that many teachers were upset by being called into work early in the morning, only to later discover school was canceled. “They felt there was no regard for their safety,” she said.

Petaluma Superintendent Steve Bolman said it had initially appeared safe for people to travel to school.

“Closing school is a big deal, especially in the high school district where we’re getting up to first-semester finals next week,” he said. Finally, he decided to cancel class after a number of other districts announced closures at 7 a.m. and a flood warning was issued. Then, he said, problems with the school’s communication system kept alerts from going out to parents until shortly after 8 a.m.

Cotati-Rohnert Park Superintendent Robert Haley said he had heard from concerned parents as well, but mostly, “everyone acknowledges these are difficult decisions to make. Literally nobody can predict the weather, though we’d like to think we can.”

Melita Cedarholme is the parent of a Cotati-Rohnert Park student and was not happy with the last-minute cancellation, but said she preferred that to what happened at her daughter’s school, La Tercera Elementary in Petaluma. That school, part of Old Adobe Union, remained open all day.

“Roads are flooded all over the place,” she said. “It’s not safe to be driving in these conditions.”

Schools receive state funding based on their students’ average daily attendance, but superintendents interviewed said that money did not factor in their decisions. Bolman said he thought it was likely districts would receive a waiver from the state so that their school closures would not cost them average daily attendance dollars.

Last-minute closures didn’t just ruffle feathers at the grade school level.

SRJC student Christopher Angel, who lives near Guerneville, said he left for his 8 a.m. class at about 7 a.m. but turned around when he got a flood warning on his phone.

“I decided it wasn’t worth it,” he said. “It would have been great if they’d been a little more proactive.”

SRJC President Frank Chong said he decided to keep school open early Thursday morning after talking with faculty members who stressed the importance of students being able to study for finals, which begin next week.

But as the bad weather continued and other schools closed, Chong decided to close SRJC at noon and encouraged people who hadn’t already come in to stay home.

“We tried to take a lot of different factors into consideration and safety was first and foremost,” he said. He acknowledged that many people had a tough time getting to campus. “That’s regrettable,” he said, “But we wanted to give people the opportunity to come.”

As of Thursday night, SRJC was slated to be open Friday, but planned to re-evaluate at 6:30 a.m.

Staff Writer Jamie Hansen blogs about education at extracredit.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach her at 521-5205 or jamie.hansen@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jamiehansen.