Pottstown Schools Closed Tuesday

The Pottstown District will be closed on Tuesday due to the blizzard cleanup that is ongoing around the area.

The district posted the following message to their Facebook page:

Tuesday, January 26, 2016 the Pottstown School District will be closed for all students and staff members.

All activities for Tuesday, January 26th are cancelled.

Many have expressed curiosity as to how a a school district decides whether or not to close. The Spring-Ford school district shared the following rationale.

Please understand that we make the decision to open or close the schools in bad weather based on a careful analysis of all relevant factors. The decision is based on recommendations from the Director of Transportation and Director of Planning, Operations and Facilities to the Superintendent of Schools. Factors include:

- Information on road conditions from transportation staff and from the police. We must give careful consideration to the most dangerous roads in the district. Even if your street looks clear, travel elsewhere in the district may be quite dangerous.

- Amount of snow and ice accumulated

- Building conditions

- Parking lot conditions. Administrators talk to maintenance and custodial staff members who are responsible for clearing and treating school parking lots and sidewalks.

- Temperature and wind chill. Please remember that some of our students walk to school and many must wait outside for the bus.

- Weather predictions. We prefer not making our decision based on weather predictions, which are not always accurate. But sometimes this is unavoidable.- Young drivers. We must consider that some high school students drive to school.

Please check back with Patch for updated information as it becomes available.