A heavy snow fall barricades the houses of the Parker area, and the kids eye’s glimmer in anticipation of a snow day. The excitement quickly dissipates upon remembering who their principal is. The decision is simple: He wakes up, looks outside, and decides there won’t be a snow day.

Or is it?

The process starts at the break of dawn where Mrs. Kesseler, GD principal, and Mr. Carruthers, BD principal, “get up at 4 AM or 4:20 AM and make their first contact, usually through telephone or text, then there are times if its already snowing they will go out and drive and see.”

The early preparation is put in place for the erratic forecast of Colorado.

The decision even starts before the school day where Mr. Carruthers takes notes on weather projections and predictions.

Mr. Carruthers says, “because of the fact the projections are not often accurate, weather for example can be forecasted in the whole Denver metro area, but then it will go North or South or through the middle of the state, it doesn’t always work the way it was predicted.”

Objectivity and safety are the methods in which the principals decide whether there ought to be a snow day, as opposed to his Canadian background, a theory many have circulated as the reasoning behind the lack of snow days in the past couple years. The grinning principal finds it astounding and amusing that students think that his Canadian background is a factor his decision, he said, “We just haven’t had the accumulation to call full snow days, I mean think about it, we haven’t. People complain about me being Canadian, but I don’t have any control that we haven’t had any big [snowfalls] in the past two years”

Mr. Carruthers pulls from three main sources to aid him in making his decision: The Colorado Department of Transportation, local meteroligists, and his years of experience. Mr. Carruthers said, “the sources gives [sic] us the road conditions and it also has cameras associated with it, so you can actually see the Colorado Department of Transportation and see the speed of traffic, you can see what the surface conditions are you can see the overpass conditions and so it gives us a lot of real time information”

Rather than the horrifying (for students, at least) stories of Canadian schools remaining open with three feet of snow, the truth is that actual data dictates the decision.

Not the stories of principals valiantly marching through snow storms to get to school and if so, opening school. Not the any of the various other rumors. The decision is rooted in safety and reality.

Mr. Carruthers is firm and simple with his priorities, he said, “It’s all about if the roads are safe enough for our student drivers to drive on. The last thing we want is to have kids stranded at school”