With weather being top of mind this week, Ector County ISD Superintendent Scott Muri reviewed the decision making process that goes into opening or closing school for bad weather during his media call Wednesday.
Muri noted that the primary drivers in the process are the safety of students and staff members.
“Today, we missed our third day of school at ECISD due to weather. In fact, we just finished a weather call with the National Weather Service and we’ll use their information that they provide to make a decision about schools on Thursday,” Muri said.
That decision making process involves a lot of people.
“If we anticipate bad weather, and typically we receive information from the National Weather Service, we get up early in the morning. We have a group of people that drive roads between 3 and 4 a.m. They gather together at 4 o’clock … and discuss the road conditions. They make a recommendation,” Muri said.
“They engage me at about 4:15 in the morning. We talk about what the recommendation is. I then reach out to some of the other superintendents in the area to see if they’re experiencing … similar conditions. Then collectively we make a decision about what’s best, first regionally, but most important for the students and staff members we serve in Ector County. Then … by 5 o’clock we make that decision and then we begin the communication process throughout our community.”
They don’t want to put buses on the road if conditions are bad.
“Some of our bus drivers leave very early in the morning to pick up their bus and then to pick up students that we transport throughout the community,” Muri said.
They also want to notify parents early enough so they can make child care decisions in the event that school is closed.
“It’s a pretty healthy process that we go through. But it always starts with some guidance from the National Weather Service … One important reminder about the school decision is when we do miss a day of school, those are days that must be made up, so moms and dads as you looked at our school calendar you’re aware that we built in two days this year that we call bad weather make-up days so in the event that we do miss school because of bad weather we use those days to recover the days that we’ve missed,” Muri said.
He added that they will be using both of the days, which are Feb. 20 and April 10.
ECISD was closed for three days this week.
“One of the pieces of work that we will have to do is figure out how we will make up that third day. Potentially, if we missed another day, whether that’s this week or at another point, we’ll have to decide how we will make up the time that we missed from school,” Muri said.
He added that more information is available on the ECISD website, ectorcountyisd.org.
Asked if the district has considered adding more bad weather days to the calendar, Muri said that can be difficult to do.
“I remember my very first winter here. We missed a lot of school, in fact a whole week of school … due to a significant storm. … Our challenge is how to put all of this into a calendar that our community wants to end before the Memorial Day weekend and a calendar that starts in early August. It can be difficult to put all of those options in a school calendar, but two (missed days) right now is where we are and certainly we evaluate every year and consider expanding those opportunities,” Muri said.
The two bad weather days have worked for ECISD for several years.
“Obviously, it’s not enough days this year. There’s a minimum threshold for kids to be at school for us to get credit,” Muri said.
He added that safety is always the driver for school closures.
“If we had to cancel a month’s worth of school to keep our kids safe, then we would do that. We certainly have to always be mindful of making up the time and the days … But at the end of the day, it’s about safety and making sure that our students and staff members are safe. That will always be the primary driver that we use to make the decision,” Muri said.
On another topic, Muri said the 2023 bond committee held its first meeting last week with approximately 150 people.
“That bond committee is made up of students, parents, staff members, as well as members of our community. … Meeting No. 1 was to learn about the decision making process that (the) committee will use to create their recommendation for the board of trustees. (At) our second meeting, we’ll … dive deeply into some significant data. We will hear from our demographers, a group of individuals that have studied the growth and development that has happened in Ector County, so we’ll hear the latest information from them. We will also be talking about our school facility condition index. A group of engineers visited every school in ECISD, so we have the condition of those facilities, as well as the recommendations that the architects and engineers have made about the buildings that we own in ECISD,” Muri said.
The committee will continue looking at various data sources and ultimately create a recommendation for the board in June.
“The trustees will spend the summer months deliberating that recommendation, and then if they choose in the month of August, they can call an election and that election would occur in November of 2023,” Muri said.
The ECISD website also has more information about that under the Bond 2023 tab.
This is the time of year that eighth-grade students begin making decisions about the courses they would like to take in high school.
Last week, the district sponsored an 8th Grade Course Fair where 2,500 eighth-graders from the middle schools had a chance to come to one location and explore course and opportunities.
“We thank Odessa College for hosting that for us. We had our Career and Technical Education teachers and students on (hand) talking about the 26 different Career and Technical Education pathways that students can choose from. We had our Athletic Department there talking about the variety of different athletic programs and opportunities that students may engage (in). Our Fine and Performing Arts folks were there as well talking and sharing with our students about all of the incredible opportunities that you can find in the Fine and Performing Arts in Ector County ISD and just a host of other organizations and course options that students have were available,” Muri said.
“The kids had a great time developing a better understanding of their high school opportunities so that when it comes time for them to make choices about their high school pathway, they now have some concrete information about what those pathways look like at the high school. We salute all the teachers and students that engaged in that opportunity last week,” Muri said.
He encouraged parents to talk to their children about the experience.
