PAINESVILLE, Ohio — Riverside Local Schools issued an apology after a “late decision” to close schools Tuesday morning amid a Winter Weather Advisory as freezing rain created tough travel conditions throughout Northeast Ohio.
The apology was part of the following note, which was distributed to families within the district:
Dear Riverside Families,
We want to apologize for the late decision to close schools today. We realize this may have caused an inconvenience for some families. Please know that the safety and well-being of our staff and students is our number one priority, ultimately leading to our decision to close schools around 6:30 a.m.
We would like to walk you through the timeline of this morning’s events to help everyone understand why the decision was made.
During the Winter months, we have several district personnel driving roads as early as 4:30 a.m. throughout the 65 square miles of our District (which covers Concord Township, Leroy Township, Painesville Township, Grand River and small portions of Painesville City and Chardon). Per our protocols, typically all attempts to close school are made by 5:30 a.m. At this time, the roads were deemed safe and drivable, school building parking lots and walkways were plowed and treated with salt and we were planning on a regular school day.
Unfortunately, temperatures began to drop below freezing right around the time our buses began their routes for Riverside Campus pick-up. This vastly changed the conditions of many of the roads in our District. Five of our buses encountered unpassable road conditions within the first 5 to 10 minutes of their route, including one bus in Grand River, two in Leroy Township and two in Concord Township.
Given the vast change of road conditions in a short amount of time, combined with many of our buses being unable to complete routes (and having to repeat those same routes two more times because we are a triple-tiered system), we ultimately made the difficult decision to cancel school.
Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused. Thank you for your understanding.
Chris Rateno, Superintendent
Riverside Local Schools
The district also posted about the closure on their Facebook page:
The icy conditions came as the National Weather Service placed all of Northeast Ohio under a Winter Weather Advisory due to the freezing rain concerns from 12 a.m. until 12 p.m. Tuesday.
