The snow today evidently wasn’t enough for a snow day, but it did cause some transportation problems for students and staff.
Morgan Noll, junior, was on her way to school this morning expecting to be going on a field trip to the St. Louis Art Museum and Cafe Provencal in Kirkwood with her french class.
Noll said she was nervous to drive in the snow, and found it difficult.
“I even bashed into the curb,” Noll said.
But soon after arriving at school, as she was walking down to the gym to meet her french class, Noll found out that the field trip was cancelled due to the weather conditions.
“I thought I was going to be gone all day,” Noll said. “I had a quiz first hour that I took anyway, and I wasn’t prepared. I thought I had another night to study.”
Noll said she can see why they decided to cancel the field trip, but that there shouldn’t be a double standard for canceling field trips and canceling school altogether.
“If we had school, we should have been able to go on the field trip,” Noll said.
Della Thompson, foreign language teacher, said she and Associate Principal Paul Burns decided to cancel the trip for the safety of the students.
“I had driven on the roads we were going to be on,” Thompson said. “It just didn’t seem safe.”
The field trip cost students $25, and Thompson gave the option for a refund.
“We’re trying to reschedule,” Thompson said. “I spoke to both places we were going to and they were fine with that.”
To help students like Noll, who had no intention of being in class today, Thompson sent out an email to teachers explaining the situation. She even gave her third hour class time to work and study for other classes.
“The students were really understanding,” Thompson said. “One thing you can’t control is the weather.”
Associate Principal Paul Burns said that field trip cancellations are evaluated on a case by case basis, and that there are no set guidelines for cancellations.
“We made the decision to reschedule for safety reasons,” Burns said. “And we were short on buses on a day like today.”
Burns said that with the traffic delays and bus delays, the field trip simply wouldn’t have worked for time reasons.
In fact, the last two buses arrived during second lunch shift.
“We always air on the side of caution with our students,” Burns said.