Students returned to school today amid a snowy parking lot and icy sidewalks. From Monday, Jan. 6 to Wednesday Jan. 8, the district closed its schools due to heavy snow and road conditions.
Anagha Mandadi, senior, was faced with a snowy surprise when she arrived at school this morning.
“My parking spot had half, like half of it was like fully snow, and I could barely park,” Mandadi said. “I was like fully scared I couldn’t make it inside the school in time because I got there a little bit late because it was icy on the roads.”
Mandadi had to attempt parking multiple times, and she said she nearly hit the car next to her. She arrived a few minutes late, but was excused because of the conditions.
“It was freezing cold, and I couldn’t get out of my car properly because there was snow on the way out of my door, so I had snow in my shoes as I was walking into school and it was really annoying,” Mandadi said.
According to Kelly Baker, attendance secretary, nine teachers are out for all or some of the day, and the student attendance rate was an average of 89% across all grade levels.
“We usually run around 96% attendance so we’re down a little bit,” Baker said.
Junior Principal Kyle Devine is working today to improve conditions in the parking lot and on the sidewalk, along with other administrators. Custodians also have been working outside through the snow days. One task Devine took up was scraping ice off of the sidewalks.
“We were able to get rid of a decent amount of the snow, but then obviously the hard kind of compacted ice is a safety issue,” Devine said. “So we’re just breaking it up before the end of the day.”
Devine also has been treating some areas with extra ice ahead of tonight’s Curriculum Night and the forecasted snow this evening into tomorrow morning.
Layla Shockley, senior, has been recovering from a broken foot, landing her in a handicapped parking spot.
“When we got there, there were still like staff shoveling the drop off area, and they were shoveling the snow in the direction of the handicap spots,” Shockley said. “There was like piles kind of like here and there in the handicap spots.”
Shockley parked on top of ice and snow, and she had trouble getting across and onto the sidewalk.
“I think that the school is doing the best they can, but I think they should have just like acknowledged that things weren’t that great instead of trying to like push through,” Shockley said.
Emma Grzyb, senior, said there should’ve been a snow day today. She enjoyed her three days off but “the weather just made everything dangerous.”
Grzyb also said she had trouble getting to school and slid into the parking lot this morning. The ice patch remains by the back entrance of MHS where Emma slid.
