GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — In West Michigan a snow day is a pretty common fact of life, but an "extreme heat" day? Now that's a little more rare.
However, this Thursday and Friday, students at GRPS are experiencing just that. The school day and all after school activities have been cancelled for the week as temperatures soared into the 90s.
While class was in session through Wednesday this week, as temperatures in the remaining un-airconditioned classrooms reached the mid-80s, GRPS Superintendent Dr. Leadriane Roby decided to pull the plug.
Leon Hendrix, the Executive Director of Communications and External Affairs, gave us some insight into why this decision was made.
Leon told us, "This decision really came about yesterday afternoon as the temperatures got above 90 degrees outside, and we started hearing complaints and concerns from some of our team members, as well as some of our families, about how hot it was getting in some of the classrooms of our non air conditioned buildings. So together with that, and realizing that the forecast for today and tomorrow was going to only be worse in terms of how hot it was going to be, we made the decision to say, you know what, let's have our scholars do some learning from home on those days and cancel school in person."
Leon says there is no hard and fast rule for what type of heat will cancel classes, and that they judge each situation on a case by case basis.
Leon says GRPS is aware of the impacts on the lives of students and parents when classes are cancelled, but says they stand by their decision.
When asked about this concern he told us, "It's a situation that we always take very seriously, and a decision that we really weigh in all factors before we make those decisions. So yeah, we recognize that it's a struggle for some of our families, and we try to make sure that we give them ample notice so they can make decisions [on] what's best for having care for their children when they're not in school."
When addressing questions about why the school is doing this now when students used to attend class in hot weather during years past Leon said, "We hear that feedback, but we also recognize that we are an evolving society and the way we treat people is part of that evolution. We listen to the voice of our scholars, our families, and our our team members, and our community. When they said, you know what, it's too hot in some of these buildings, we found that was reasonable. So we made the decision that we did this week."
Another question was why not just close the schools with no air conditioning? On this GRPS though it best to keep all students on the same schedule and to have a uniform message to communicate with the community.
In the future GRPS is considering adding air conditioning to the buildings that don't yet have it, and Leon says it will be something included with a bond initiative coming up in November of this year.
GRPS is expecting classes to resume next week as temperatures return to the 80s.
-- Meteorologist Michael Behrens
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