It wasn’t quite a mea culpa, and there was a lot of shade cast in other directions, but Superintendent Francisco Durán kinda, sorta intimated that school officials blew the call in closing schools on Jan. 20 for what turned out to be . . . rain.
“This one was very difficult,” Dúran told School Board members at their meeting later that night. “The forecast we had . . . did not pan out as expected from what we received from our local weather and national weather sources.”
Those weather sources were hardly prognosticating a blizzard; the consensus forecast called for an inch or two of 2 after several hours of rain. The National Weather Service issued a “winter-weather advisory,” generally reserved for mild events.
But ever since the school system was caught with its pants down – or, more accurately, students trying to get home – during a worse-than-expected winter storm during the tenure of Superintendent Patrick Murphy, Arlington moved from one of the most bullish school systems in the region in terms of getting students to class during the winter to one of the most skittish.
Arlington school officials attempt to make winter-weather calls by 6 p.m. the day before, or if that is not feasible, no later than 5 a.m. the day of.
Deciding whether to open or close schools tends to be one of the most challenging for school-system leaders, as few remember the times when the calls proved correct, but many never forget, or forgive, the ones that turned out wrong (as Murphy learned the hard way).
All school leaders can do is “make the best decisions possible” with the information at hand, Durán said.