Announcer (00:01): Highlighting the amazing stories from inside the North Clackamas School district. This is the Proud To Be N C S D podcast, hosted by longtime principal and current community relations director, Curtis Long.

Newscaster (00:14): This is a Fox 12 first alert weather day.

Newscaster (00:18): Good morning. It is Thursday, February 23rd, a day we will not soon forget.

Newscaster (00:22): And it is another first alert weather day. As many people in our area are dealing with the impacts of really what is a historic snowstorm?

Curtis Long (00:30): Well, that historic day is easy to remember simply because of the numbers 2 23 23. But as we look back on last month's unforgettable snowstorm, February 23rd really won't be the day etched in the memories of North Clackamas students, families, and staff members, including our heroic bus drivers.

Newscaster (00:46): On the roads, countless drivers are still stranded this morning,

Curtis Long (00:50): As you probably remember, 2 23 23 was the day the Portland metropolitan area, including the 40 square miles of our school district, woke up to a winter wonderland of wind, ice and a February record, 10 plus inches of snow on the ground in parts of our district.

Newscaster (01:05): Tony, I know we've seen similar situations, but this is probably the worst ever. Uh, this we're, we're in new territory. Yes,

Curtis Long (01:12): With day long temperatures stuck below freezing for the next 48 hours. Thursday, February 23rd and Friday February 24th we're relatively simple calls in our district.

Newscaster (01:22): We don't need to tell you that all major school districts are closed today, including Portland Public Schools, the Beaverton School District, the North Clackamas School District, all giving kids a snow day. These are just some of them, not all of them. It might be easier for us to run what's open. I don't think anything's really open.

Curtis Long (01:37): But today on the Proud To Be NCSD podcast, we're going back to February 23rd and hitting the rewind button

Curtis Long (01:45): Back to late afternoon on February 22nd, when we started to see the first flakes of this historic storm, just as our middle schools were dismissing for the afternoon, while some buses in our Eastside attendance areas were able to safely drop off students at all of their stops, the suddenly icy roads stopped others midway through routes and still others were instructed to remain parked at school. We'll also fast forward to a similar situation the following Monday when leftover icy side streets ait A two hour late start, left some of our morning bus stops and some entire routes. Unserviceable. Today on this winter weather edition of The Proud to Be N C ncsd Podcast, we answer community questions that always heat up when the temperature drops below freezing. How does the district decide to call a snow day or a two hour late start? What goes on behind the scenes before those decisions are announced?

Curtis Long (02:35): Why are weather related early dismissal so rare? How are ncsd buses equipped to handle snow and ice? What happens when a bus with students on board becomes temporarily stuck? And how do we get all that information to families as quickly as possible? For those questions and more, we bring in our panel of experts who each worked upwards of 16 hour days during the most recent winter blast. Welcome to the podcast, NCSD Transportation Director Kathy Calkins, Assistant Directors James Prichard and Cheryl Crosgrove and Assistant Superintendent of Operations. Cindy Detchon, all of you. Thanks for being here. And we'll start the way we usually do on these podcasts. We'll have you introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about what you do for the district so listeners can hear and match voices to who's speaking.

Kathy Calkins (03:14): My name is Kathy Calkins. I'm the Director of Transportation. My job is to keep the buses rolling every day, picking up kids safely, make sure that the kids are transported safely. I have a team that's here with me today that also pitches in. We all have our gifts there at transportation and we meld very well together.

Cheryl Crosgrove (03:33): I'm Cheryl Crosgrove, associate Director for Transportation, and also the administrator that oversees the dispatch office.

James Prichard (03:40): And my name is James Prichard. I'm an associate director. I kind of oversee the routing end of things.

Cindy Detchon (03:46): Cindy Detchon, assistant Superintendent for Operations Transportation is one of the departments that I have the pleasure of serving and working with. I also work with our facilities department, technology, community services, and the department where we are today, community relations and communications.

Curtis Long (04:01): And I think for Cindy and Kathy, it's your second time in the hot seat on this podcast. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you couldn't escape. You've been here once before. You're back on again. There's

Cindy Detchon (04:07): Lots to share about this district.

Curtis Long (04:08): <laugh>. Lots to share for sure. And we'll go through all those questions that we asked at the beginning of the show. You heard there at the very beginning, but let's go back to February 22nd. It's nearing dismissal time for our district's middle schools. The temperature outside is rapidly dropping. The first snowflakes are beginning to fall. What's going through each of your minds at that time? It's about four o'clock and we're really kind of an in between zone where the buses are getting ready to roll and we know that the winter weather is coming.

Kathy Calkins (04:32): I'll start with that. I had gone home and uh, I was relaxing on my couch. I had started my day at three 30 in the morning to check the roads. I start that at 4:00 AM and thought everything was gonna be great. I get a text from James that said, we're hard training at Happy Valley Middle School, and that meant trouble. So I got up, got my boots, got my cap, went out, and the rest is pretty much history. We ended up on class up with one of our buses that couldn't move forward, couldn't move backwards with students on, and, uh, while these guys Cheryl ran dispatch and uh, James fielded phone calls and we all worked together.

Curtis Long (05:10): So I think it's interesting, you're all four in different places. So Kathy gets called back to work. James, you're in the office. Cheryl, you're at the dispatch. What are we hearing from our bus drivers who are out at Happy Valley Middle when it's starting to get a little dicey out there?

James Prichard (05:24): I think it first started with the principal over at Happy Valley calling and just asking, Hey, she was seeing whether that we weren't seeing in other parts of the district. I mean, we have 40 square miles in anybody familiar with the geography of North Clackamas understands that we have some higher elevations in certain areas. And one of those is Mount Scott. And she was starting to see snowflakes come down and start sticking earlier than four o'clock. It was probably just shortly after three o'clock, just kind of asking and reaching out to see if we could start sending our middle school kids home. We do have a few buses that arrive there early and we could probably get them out maybe five to 10 minutes early. But in reality, we have our high schools, both Nelson and CHS on the east side of our district that we had to get them home first. And so that's where I was kind of coordinating phone calls with Cindy at the central office and trying to figure out, is this something we want to do? And going from there.

Cindy Detchon (06:13): Yeah. And we started watching the weather much earlier in the day. Uh, when we know that we have some forecasted weather coming in like that, we start to monitor and look at what activities do we have tonight? Are we gonna have to close early even we make it through the rest of the school day, which is always our goal. We have also have evening activities and meetings and things to, to take care of as well. So there's a lot of coordinating throughout the day and there's a, a text message group going back and forth, emails, phone calls, uh, and just making sure that we know where everybody is. So if we have to do something different than a typical school day, that we know where all those players are and what kind of messaging we're gonna have to get out.

Curtis Long (06:48): So I'm next to Cindy in the district office and she's got cameras. She can look in on all of our school cameras. So we're looking at Happy Valley Middle School saying, oh gosh, yeah, we can see snow in the parking lot. We can see the kids milling around outside. Cheryl though, you're, you're kind of the ears of the bus drivers. What are you hearing at this time as buses are starting to call in and we'll play some of that a little bit later on in the podcast. We have audio of those conversations.

Cheryl Crosgrove (07:13): I'm hearing that the snow is sticking and they're starting to have issues with sliding, they're using their drop chains, just really concerned about if they're going to be able to make it where they're going or not.

Curtis Long (07:27): So you're hearing that Cindy, we're hearing that. Okay. A lot of families are gonna ask, if we know all of this, why didn't NCSD just announce an early dismissal? Why can't we do that? I think it's a good time for all of us to explain. We can't just all of a sudden say, okay, buses, let's go Now.

Cindy Detchon (07:41): First of all, that weather came in much earlier than expected. Right. And that happened back in December of 2016 also.

Curtis Long (07:47): Oh, we're gonna talk about that. Are we gonna talk about that day too?

Cindy Detchon (07:50): About six o'clock is when they said it was going to come in. So we had scheduled to cancel all activities starting at four 30. Let's get the middle school kids on the bus, we'll send them home, make sure our drivers get back. We want all of our employees in their cars on their way home booked by five o'clock. That was our plan. And then it came in much earlier than expected.

Cheryl Crosgrove (08:07): What was so surprising is that I was in the dispatch office, which is on 122nd off of Highway two 12 and looking out the window, we have no snow, nothing at all in the dispatch office. But I'm hearing from the drivers that it's snowing. It's snowing hard. It's sticking. We're starting to have issues with sliding.

Kathy Calkins (08:28): So I was on Mount Scott on Clatsop with a bus, and the whole time I'm up there, I'm thinking that it's Snowmageddon all over again. There's snow down on the flats, there's snow everywhere. And James says Kathy, he says, this isn't like Snowmageddon <laugh>. And that's what we call the 2016,

Curtis Long (08:44): Twelve fourteen sixteen. We will remember that day.

Kathy Calkins (08:47): There isn't any snow down here and I'm, there's not any snow down there. You know, it was just up on Happy Valley and the place I was was sitting at with the bus, there was car after car after car sliding down Clatsop Boulevard. It was fascinating, crazy to watch.

Curtis Long (09:03): And I think what our listeners may not realize is because we have three different levels, we have elementary, middle, and high school. Elementary goes first as far as dismissals home, then the high schools and then the middle schools are the last ones. So we may at this time had high school routes still out trying to drop kids off at home, correct?

James Prichard (09:21): Yes, correct. And we did. We had actually some of our high school buses, unbeknownst to us that were supposed to be at Happy Valley, starting to do their runs for Happy Valley. They were stuck with their high school runs, just trying to get up King Road right in front of Happy Valley Middle. And they weren't able to get traction just to get up that short little hill. And so we were kind of going backwards a little bit. Our shop foreman lives on Clatsop just north of Happy Valley Middle. And he was calling into me about a, I believe it was a centennial bus that had dropped down chains that slid off the road in front of his house. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. That's really what kind of initiated and started the process of saying we need, I mean if that's so close to our school, we need to make sure we get dropdowns on if we're gonna be able to even get out of there at that point. And so that's where we made the call to have the buses hard chain. And we can kind of talk a little bit more later on about the differences between our dropdowns and our hard chains.

Curtis Long (10:08): Well, let's talk a little bit about Cindy. We weren't expecting that weather until later, but had we been expecting it and to call an early release if we wanted to release kids from school, what time does that have to happen? I think some listeners maybe think, well gosh, school gets out at two o'clock. Why not just call that at one o'clock and off we go? But it doesn't work that way.

Cindy Detchon (10:25): It doesn't. I think it's important to remember that we have, uh, shuttles running back and forth across our district, uh, throughout the day. We have students that attend Sabin-Schellenberg every period from five different high schools. We have high school students who work in some of our middle schools or our, in our elementary schools as tutors or mentors. And so we don't necessarily have everybody just sitting at the bus transportations department waiting to go pick up students. They're already on shuttles and such. So James it's 10:30, 11 o'clock, something like that. We've talked about that in the past.

James Prichard (10:53): Yeah. And a good example of this, we had a elementary school not too long ago where we actually were able to recall in most of our bus drivers, um, we had to take some elementary or no, I'm sorry, a middle school home early because of an incident.

Curtis Long (11:07): Yeah, there's an incident at the school.

James Prichard (11:09): And so we took them home before the elementaries, but trying to get all of our bus drivers home, they have fundamentally a 12 hour day that's broken into a couple shifts and maybe a few shuttles. So a lot of those drivers may be at home, right. Eating lunch, doing things in the midday. So trying to recall them and get them there in time to do some of these things is a challenge. But we usually try to, we, we can usually get it done.

Curtis Long (11:30): I think that's a good thing that we don't remember either, is that our bus drivers are kind of on split shifts, right? They do their morning route, then they have some time and then they do their afternoon route. So as Cindy said, our bus drivers maybe aren't even ready to go yet. They aren't behind the wheel yet ready to go pick up those kids early. So what I'm hearing is if we wanna do an early dismissal because of weather or because of anything we need to call that around 10 30 in the morning, we need to need to know that. Yes. Which is good information for families who are wondering, well why didn't we just call that early? But you have to think about, we stretch all the way from Milwaukee where there may have been no snow to where Kathy was up on the hills in Happy Valley. That's still our district and we've never done a situation, I don't think, Cindy, where part of the district is closed and part of the district is not. Have we ever done anything like that?

Cindy Detchon (12:14): Not in my time here. Okay. Once in a while we've had incidents at a school, right? For instance, pipe burst or something where we have to close down a school but not the entire district or just a portion at a time.

Curtis Long (12:24): And for weather related, we typically would not do that. We wouldn't say, okay, schools on the west side of 2 0 5, you're going on time, but schools on the east side, you're gonna be two hour delayed. I don't think transportation could handle that. Could they?

Kathy Calkins (12:36): They handle anything <laugh>, <laugh>, I think heck yeah. It's good.

James Prichard (12:39): But having a high schooler myself, I know that like the Sabin-Schellenberg program,

Curtis Long (12:43): Right, okay.

James Prichard (12:43): Where you have a mix of, or east side and west side high schools, it really complicates how their day and their programming functions when half your classes or a quarter of your class is missing for a week or a day or however long the snow event is.

Cindy Detchon (12:56): And we have many magnet programs. We have schools of choice, we have new urban, we have places where our students come from all over the district. And it's pretty easy to think about the school that's in my neighborhood, if that's all I have to think about. But we have to think about 32 schools across all the geography that you've mentioned

Curtis Long (13:12): And you guys mentioned before. So I've heard some terms hard chained. I want to know what that is and what goes into chaining up a bus. So our buses are all equipped with chains, correct? Yes. Okay. So how difficult is it for a bus driver usually with a bus full of kids on board that can't be easy to chain his or her bus in the middle of a route?

Kathy Calkins (13:29): It's hard.

Curtis Long (13:30): <laugh>

Kathy Calkins (13:31): It's hard to chain my car. Yes.

Curtis Long (13:33): When, yeah. I try to avoid that.

Kathy Calkins (13:35): Yeah. If I can do that in my garage every time I would, uh, it's hard. They're heavy, what, 40 pounds? 40, 50 pounds a piece. Wow. And throwing 'em up over the tire and rolling up and we tried to get out, we had people out helping each other. They team up at the school, they teamed up at Happy Valley and they helped each other get chains on. We had trainers that went up to Happy Valley Middle and helped. And uh, we have a lot of mentions, the people that our employees that were heroes that day. Right. Helping other people, they didn't even think about heading up to where it's dangerous and there's snow and people are sliding all over the place to help their fellow driver put on chains on the bus.

Curtis Long (14:10): Right. And we have district vans and district trucks who drivers immediately hopped in. Yes. And, and went out to the Happy Valley area and went to go help our bus drivers. What about automatic chains? Do our buses have those two? I've heard about automatic chains that just dropped down.

James Prichard (14:22): Yeah. If you were to picture probably what looks like a Frisbee with maybe some four inch chains dangling around, kinda looks like an octopus. Okay. Those are on an arm underneath each of our rear wheels that when the driver flips a switch, those frisbees come down parallel to the pavement and allow those little pieces of chain to get flipped under our rear tires. Giving our drivers some instantaneous traction when needed. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> when the situation or when the conditions get so bad that those aren't as effective, we get into a situation where we need to put the hard chains on. Yeah. Which is not really like what we see on our cars anymore. I mean, I have cables with segments that go over my tires of hard like metal chains. These are full metal chains that go all the way over the outside tire. We have to get down underneath the tires and clip 'em on. And it becomes especially precarious or dangerous when they're having to hard chain those on the street. Yeah. Or in the traffic. And you're trying to watch for a lot of times the cars that are coming at you or, I mean the whole reason our buses are chaining, the traffic going around them are hitting the same condition. So it just creates a really precarious situation for our drivers laying on the ground. <laugh> in the lane of traffic trying to get a, a chain on if, if that's what's necessary.

Curtis Long (15:30): Yeah. And let's be honest, they're not only chaining their bus in the middle of traffic, they've probably got a bus full of kids and it's snowing outside. And you can imagine the kid's reaction on the bus. I imagine they're excited and that's quite a job for our bus drivers. And I know Cheryl, you were contacting them back and forth and leaning in and hearing, okay, bus 72, how are you doing out there? Bus 49, what's going on? It was fascinating for me to listen in on those conversations cuz we could listen on the radio here. What's going through your mind as you're doing all of this? And by the way, and we'll hear this in the podcast, Cheryl Crosgrove, probably the most calm person during this whole thing as she has bus drivers who are, let's be honest, it's very understandable to be panicked in that kind of situation. And Cheryl was there. I heard you say many times. Okay, you've got my undivided attention. What do you need here? Let's hear from your point of view, what's going on in this situation?

Cheryl Crosgrove (16:17): Well, first of all, I'm thinking I cannot be living this situation again because I lived through Snowmageddon of, uh, 2016 <laugh>. But, um,

Curtis Long (16:25): I thought we weren't gonna bring that up here. It keeps coming up. Uh, well it's hard. 12 14, 16.

Cheryl Crosgrove (16:31): It's hard to not bring it up. But the, the first thing that was going through my mind was how thankful that I was that all of the elementary students had already, you know, been delivered home. Right. So I knew they were home safe and sound. I actually had thought that all of our high school routes were finished too. And it was during when the snow really hit that I realized I had three buses that were out that still had high school kiddos on him. One of 'em was stuck on Clat Sip. Yeah. The other one was stuck right around the corner from Happy Valley Middle and the other one was over off of Otie getting ready to go up Idleman. Mm-hmm. And they all needed help to get chained. One of 'em fortunately was by the shop foreman's house, the other one. It took us a while to get to her.

Cheryl Crosgrove (17:13): And um, you can definitely hear in some transactions back and forth with her, the gentleman right around Happy Valley. I mean he was so close, but yet so far we couldn't get to him. But the very first thing I always think when these things happen is, how am I gonna get these folks the help that they need? Right. And you feel so powerless. And it really, really affects my, my mind and my heart because I know not only our, I mean we have students on these buses and of course their parents are worrying about 'em. But we have drivers, we have North Clackamas staff out there and the only thing I can think of is how can we safely get these folks, help get the kiddos home and get them back where they need to be.

Kathy Calkins (17:49): Yeah. I wanna say that uh, the parents of this community are amazing. I was on a bus, uh, 1 22 that had 11 students and I had parents coming up willing to walk the students and we couldn't do that cuz cars were sliding all over the place. That was not the right thing to do. They had a parent wanted to make 'em peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The kids were having to use the restroom. You know, we just have people that surround our buses hot chocolate and offer comfort things for our kids and for our drivers. I just thank the community for that because it makes us feel like a team. We're all in this together.

Cheryl Crosgrove (18:23): I was so grateful at this point that unfortunately we still had a major issue going on with one part of our district. But the other part of the district's, everybody was home. The drivers had come back in, they were heading home. So it was nothing near that day in 2016. So that was a, a huge relief. We knew we still had about what, 40 James 40 routes. Yeah. Out. So I mean that, that was a huge relief for us. We knew that we weren't dealing with the whole district. And again, I cannot say again how thankful we were that the elementary kids were home.

Curtis Long (18:54): And Kathy, you mentioned how parents came to the rescue and made sure that kids were safe. I know that you train our bus drivers too in those situations. What are they doing to make sure kids are safe in those situations? Because some of our buses are left with just a handful of students left on their route. In fact, I think we had one bus that had one student left on that route. We were listening in here at the district office. What are our bus drivers doing at that time to make sure those kids are calm, know they're safe,

Kathy Calkins (19:17): They talk to them, they'll get up, they'll walk and encourage them. Let them know that they're gonna get home. We're gonna make sure that they get home safely. We make sure that we have contacted their parents and let 'em know that, you know, we've contacted your parents, you're gonna be okay. We got ya. They're all so good at that. Cuz they have jobs that sure they love the kids and they wanna make sure the kids know they're gonna be safe.

Curtis Long (19:40): And Cindy, we're in the communications department, we're sending emails home or text home to families saying this particular bus is unable to finish its route. We're asking parents to come pick up. I'm sure some families are thinking, okay, if it's so slippery outside or so dangerous, why are we having parents come pick up? Our buses are big, they're chained. Why aren't we sending the buses out there? I think we should talk a little bit about that.

Cindy Detchon (20:01): That's the most difficult part about all of this. We know our drivers are gonna keep our students safe. If they're stuck on the side of the road, they're gonna keep our students there. But it's having to tell parents that we weren't able to get your child home today. Right. That's heartbreaking for all of us. And we don't ever like to put parents in that situation. But it's a last resort. And we also know that parents sometimes have a lot more resources than we do. Our buses are big. That does not mean they don't slide or that they're safe to be navigating the roads. And sometimes they can't because they're blocked by cars that have slid into other cars. They're blocking the road, they're, they can't maneuver down the middle of a road where there's cars piled up on the sides. But parents might have an all-wheel drive. They might be able to get their chains on in their garage. As Kathy mentioned earlier, they have a neighbor with devices on their cars or other kinds of vehicles that can get us there, there that we don't like to do that. It it, like I said, it's our last resort. Um, it never feels good to put anybody in that situation, but nonetheless that's where we were. And we don't like to be there.

James Prichard (20:55): I think also when looking at the options of, okay, maybe it might take us two hours to get them home rather than 30 minutes versus having them at school. A lot of kids who may have medical needs medications mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they may need to use restrooms, they may need to eat dietary restrictions, things like that. Those are better served at the school just in terms of keeping them safe rather than on the bus. And so that's really when we found that we couldn't get our buses even up. Just the main street in front of Happy Valley Middle. The safest place to keep the kids at that point was at the school. And then we focused on keeping them there and getting the other ones where we needed to get them.

Curtis Long (21:32): And here on the Proud To Be NCSD podcast, we are focused on getting you an inside look at what goes on behind the scenes. When winter weather presents a possible late start or school day, cancellation

Bus Driver On Radio (21:43): 1 23 has dropped all their Happy Valley Middle students.

Curtis Long (21:47): So far we've covered what happens when snow starts falling before the final school bell. And why early dismissals are so tough to call. But what happens when morning bus routes in one part of our district are deemed unsafe?

Bus Driver On Radio (21:59): 66. How's it going? It's not going very well. Uh, we can't seem to get the, uh, the guys and I can't get the chains on. We can't get the hooks in there.

Curtis Long (22:08): While other areas of our district aren't impacted at all, would we ever have some district schools in session while others across town are iced out?

Bus Driver On Radio (22:17): One two database. 1, 2 2. This is base. I just wanted to give a heads up to any drivers that are driving up and down class Up up in Happy Valley. It is extremely slick to the point where you may need to use your dropdowns. So I just wanna give a heads up. Um, it's very, feel free up here. Okay. Copy that.

Curtis Long (22:34): Heads up. The second half of this winter weather edition of the Proud Tobe ncsd podcast is up next right after this.

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Curtis Long (23:36): Okay. Let's refresh our timeline here. Wednesday, February 22nd, snowstorm starts to hit late afternoon. Afternoon activities canceled all schools closed at five, all students. Eventually we get them home safely. Thursday and Friday the 23rd and the 24th record. February snowfall in Oregon called us snow days. During the weekend, things start to thaw out a little, especially on the main thoroughfares but not the side streets and not in our district's higher elevations. That brings us to the early, yes. Early mornings of our next school day. Monday, February 27th. That's when the alarm goes off quite early for you Kathy, what happens on Monday morning the 27th?

Kathy Calkins (24:12): I get up early and get out on the road by 4:00 AM 4:00 AM

Curtis Long (24:16): Yes.

Kathy Calkins (24:16): Oh, and Cindy is also with me on that. I give her a call between four 30 and five.

Cindy Detchon (24:21): Not physically. I'm not out there physically, no.

Kathy Calkins (24:24): Between 4:30 and five. If it's terrible, then I know about four 30 I'm calling and I said we need to do this. We watched to see if the, if the temperature's going up or going down. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, there's so many variables and our professional weatherman have a hard time telling the forecast here. I'm not a professional anything but, and so it's just trying to figure out is it safe? Is it safe for our kids? And I roll around, uh, Bascott mostly get up on the highest point, sit there and wait to see what's going on. Watch the radar. I have several weather apps that I watch to see what's coming in. You know, whether the temperature's coming up or down. I usually stay up there even after I've called Cindy to make my recommendation. Continue to see how it's going, how it's gonna play out.

Kathy Calkins (25:06): It's usually me in those times. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but I think it was Monday. We still had snow all over the place in Side Streets. I had a team on Monday. Okay. Go out and I can't do the whole, they went out and they checked south of the disc cuz we're on Clmi River Drive and some of our shadier streets, river Forest is another one that they go out and they check. Yeah. We have a list of streets that we checked that city view, east View Tyler Walnut. I mean there's just a list of 'em that we go around and check.

Curtis Long (25:36): And for those of you listening, she's not reading off any notes there. She knows all those streets herself. Right out of her head. Yeah. And for those of you wondering, okay, so who makes that call? Who's scouting the roads that early in the morning? It's not Dr. Shay. James Superintendent. It's not Cindy, our assistant superintendent. It's you, Kathy, you're out, they're in your car up in the higher elevations. Checking that out at four in the morning.

Kathy Calkins (25:58): I don't like the morning part, but I love driving and I, I love adventure. It's adventurous and you know, I

Kathy Calkins (26:04): I just, I love it all. It's fine. It's,

Curtis Long (26:05): I picture you like one of those SUV commercials where the driver has a big smile on their face and they're going around turns and using their traction devices. That's what I picture you doing. Yeah. It's up there in the higher elevations. So Kathy makes a recommendation and contacts you Cindy. Correct?

Cindy Detchon (26:20): She does. And I will add though that Kathy doesn't put on chains or anything like that because she wants to know what the roads Oh okay. Really feel like. Yeah. Um, and she's just fearless about that. But she calls me with her, uh, very chipper voice <laugh>, uh, at 4 35 depending on what the morning's looking like, makes her recommendation. And then I call our superintendent. Yeah, I call Dr. Shay James. We have a chat. She is in communication also with her colleagues across other districts. So other superintendents to see what are they doing? Are people gonna go two hours late? Are they canceling school? And every district has their own unique circumstances. We don't close or stay open just because of what a particular school district does or does not do. But it is good information. So it's, it's that information gathering that we do. We look at, is it supposed to warm up considerably by 9:00 AM What's the afternoon look like?

Cindy Detchon (27:09): Is there another storm? Gonna chase it in just a few hours. So there's a ton of information that we consider. We also consider our employees, they live all over the district. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, outside of the district, Vancouver Salem. They live all over. And we have to make sure that we're also making a decision for our staff to be able to safely get to work. Because if they can't, they're gonna call out. And when they do that, we have sub shortages. We might not be able to cover all of the classes or the jobs that we need to cover. And so that puts a different strain on the district. So like I said, lots of things to consider, but Shea and I have a conversation generally able to make the phone call or the decision fairly quickly, but sometimes not right. Sometimes we just need a little bit more time.

Curtis Long (27:48): And then that decision comes to me and the team that I work with and getting that information out to all of our families. What we're going to do, let's go to Monday, February 27th, we decide on a two hour delay. What went into that decision? A two hour delay and it ended up being the right decision in a way. We'll talk a little bit about that, but why not cancel the whole day? I'm sure some of our families are asking based on what happened that morning, why not cancel the whole day? Why did we go with a two hour delay?

Cindy Detchon (28:11): It was supposed to warm up. Yeah. And it did. Most of our district, um, had bear streets. Um, it had dissipated all over many families. In fact, even the two hour delay was questionable. Sure. Because they look out their window and they see a dry street. They don't have any snow on their grass. It's safe to walk to school, it's safe to drive to school, it's safe to bike to school. And yet we have other parts of the district that were completely still in those shady areas. Yeah. The sun hadn't hit that pavement. It was still full of snow.

Curtis Long (28:37): And James, Cheryl, when you go two hour delay, do you have some bus drivers who maybe are a little nervous about their routes or how does that work when some are in the Happy Valley attendance area? Some are in the Milwaukee attendance area where they're like, well that'll be easy for me to do. But how about our Happy Valley area drivers?

Cheryl Crosgrove (28:53): My phone starts ringing about four thirty, four forty five in the morning. Right. With those exact questions. People want to know, Hey, am I going to be able to get my bus up and down? Exactly. Our driver's room is full of folks wondering what part of their route they're going to be able to do. Some of them can do bits and pieces, some of them can't do any. And then, like Cindy said, are down in the lower elevation. There's no question at all. They can totally go and have no issue at all.

Curtis Long (29:22): Now it was determined, especially for our bus routes in the east side elevations of our district, that some routes and stops were serviceable and others were too dangerous for our buses to navigate. So we did something we don't often do. School was kept on a two hour delay, but messages went out to families at schools where routes and stops were affected. Asking parents to either drive kids to school or find alternate transportation for them. Why did we take the approach we did that morning? That's different for us. We don't often do that.

Cindy Detchon (29:47): It is different. We wanted to try something a little different because we had been out of school, you have to remember since Wednesday afternoon mm-hmm. <affirmative> the week prior. And so we have many of our students, uh, rely heavily on coming to school for a safe place for a place where they can get access to food. And they'd already missed classes. Uh, those that last Thursday and Friday prior. Then you have add the weekend to that. So we really wanted to try to get our students in for at least a portion of the day. And we had a large percentage of our district that was not affected by weather. So asked Kathy, how possible would it be to determine what parts of routes would not be drivable and is there any way we could get students to school without going to those routes or those particular stops.

Cindy Detchon (30:30): Mm-hmm. So I put them on on the hot seat. I, and it was not comfortable for me to ask them to do that. It wasn't comfortable for them to go out and do all of that. But they did it because that's just what they do. This department shows up every day and does the impossible. But we had to put some families in a position where, okay, I'm gonna stay home from work and stay home with my child because I just can't get my kid there. Or we had to scramble and find their own transportation and they did. Was it the right decision? I don't know. And we're gonna a actually ask some of our families what they thought about that and was that difficult? Was it okay? We don't wanna do that very often. And like I said, if it, if this had been our first snow event and it was back in December, we probably would've just canceled for the day. But you know, we're going on our third snow day. We have to make those days up in June. Nobody wants to do that. Our, our families make vacation plans. So right now we don't have to make up any days, but if we get to another one or two, that's a possibility. And so we try to avoid that when we can do that.

Curtis Long (31:25): And let's talk about that a little bit cuz I don't think our families realize that we build in a certain number of snow days in the calendar. But we are required by the state of Oregon. Oregon Department of Education requires so many hours of school for each level of school in our district. And to meet those, we build in a few snow days. But we can go over those. And we've had that happen in the past where what is indicated as the last day of school on a school calendar is not really the last day of school because we have to make up days.

Cindy Detchon (31:50): That's right. If you look closely at that calendar, you'll see the week after the last day of school, there's these, they're little asterisks I like to call 'em snowflakes. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> so that it's a reminder that those are days are reserved and people shouldn't plan. Staff for sure cannot plan to go on vacation that week because they could easily be called back or we haven't, we've only been talking about snow. Right. But we've had wind events we've had to close because of fire and smoke. Our summer schools have been affected by extreme heat. Other districts around us cancel routes all of the time because of driver shortages. We luckily have not had to do that. So there's other reasons besides snow that we do have to cancel. And sometimes part of the district, um, in those cases that is absolutely true. We might have a down power line. We might have power outages that are, are affecting water in certain circumstances. We do in that case, send or close a portion of the district.

Curtis Long (32:39): Some families may ask, they see on the news, some districts are on snow routes. North Clackamas does not have snow routes. But we kind of did a hybrid version of snow routes this time. But talk about the reasoning behind why we typically don't have snow routes.

James Prichard (32:52): Since I've been here, I've been here for about 10 years and I grew up in this area. I think the first year I was here we had snow routes but got rid of 'em. And the rationale that was given was, and I know I respect that there are many school districts around us that still have snow routes. Sure. The idea is that we're expecting kids to walk down streets and sidewalks that aren't safe enough for our buses to go down. It doesn't make a lot of sense when we're putting the kids in the same precarious situation that we're not willing to put our bus into. So at that time they just said we're not gonna do snow routes. And we haven't planned it that way since.

Curtis Long (33:24): And I think we forget, we have elementary school students, six and seven year olds who are often on their own getting to their bus stop or getting dropped off at their bus stop. Now we don't drop off kindergartners unless parents are there. But first, second, third graders I think, and I put on my elementary principal hat all of a sudden think, oh my goodness. Now I have a first grader who is getting off at an unfamiliar stop that they're not used to. Are they gonna know how to get themselves home from that stop? So it makes a lot of sense of why and I I wanted to make sure we clarify that for families, why we don't typically use snow routes. But this last time it was kind of a modified version. What Kathy provided to Cindy was a list of stops or James, I'm sure you were involved in that. And Cheryl as well. We are not able to get to these stops that came to our office. And then it was my job and the, the team that I work with our job to get that out to families.

James Prichard (34:08): And then our routers were also calling the individual families who the expectation was that they were gonna have to walk a couple blocks down the hill to get to the modified stop. And so they were scrambling to get those communications out that morning so that the kids knew where to catch their bus and where they'd be dropped off in the afternoon potentially

Kathy Calkins (34:24): The afternoon went better. I think we had four stops that we couldn't get to. And it was easy to communicate to those families. The stops that we could get to was no more than two blocks from their original stop. And we made sure, especially for the little guys Curtis, we made sure we called those families. I made a connection with them. In fact, happy Valley Elementary helped us with that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> so that they knew we won't drop, uh, kindergartners without a parent. And it was important that we let them know that they're not gonna be at the same stop. We need you to come here to pick up these kids.

James Prichard (34:55): Oh. I think I would also add, even without the snow events too, if the kids were ever uncomfortable getting off at a stop that they weren't familiar with mm-hmm <affirmative>, we would never, and we drill this into our drivers, we would never, ever coerce or you know, tell a kid that they have to get off a stop. We oftentimes bring kids back to school because they do not feel safe getting off. So even in these circumstances, we are more than willing if they don't know whether it's a kindergartner, first grader, second grader, third grader, all the way up through high school, if we have a high schooler that is not comfortable getting off the bus at a particular bus stop, we will bring them back to school and keep them safe.

Curtis Long (35:25): And that doesn't have to be weather related. The student can simply say, I I don't want to get off here today and we'll take 'em back to school. Correct.

Cheryl Crosgrove (35:31): I wanna add one more thing. I just wanna make sure that folks and parents know that when these decisions are being made, that it's all about the safety of the students. And a lot of times, like James mentioned, we have kids that have to walk down hills, down sidewalks that are not accessible and we just don't feel like it's a great idea to have students out there where it's not safe. Where they could potentially be hit by a car, et cetera.

James Prichard (35:55): And I think that's one of the things that as a parent, when you hear that school districts say, you know, the roads aren't great for going to school or they have a two hour delay or they cancel school, you're looking at your roads but you may not be looking at the sidewalks. And here in North Clackamas, our elementary schoolers are expected to walk up to a mile to get to their elementary schools and even further for our middle and high schools. And so a lot of times, you know, we need to make sure that our schools are accessible for everyone. So sometimes those sidewalks, they plow 'em and they're covered, they plow the roads and the sidewalks might be covered with what was left on the roads. So we have to take that into consideration also.

Curtis Long (36:27): What did we learn from February's extraordinary weather situations that we can apply to future winter weather blast?

Kathy Calkins (36:32): I have learned that I probably needed several more weather apps on my phone. <laugh>, I think that we'll have discussions about Monday. You know, do we have snow routes? Do we have areas where we're able to pick up kids?

Curtis Long (36:45): And we're gonna ask for family input on that. The plan is to send out a survey and maybe by the time families are listening to this, that survey has come out. But we will be asking for family input on how did that work, as Cindy had mentioned. How did that work for you? Was it difficult? Was it preferred in that? I think people forget, you know, in the Milwaukie attendance area we had bare streets and in the Happy Valley attendance area we had snow and ice. And we need to be consistent across the district.

Cindy Detchon (37:07): I think it's a great question to ask our families because we have almost 17,000 students in the school district and we make one decision for all students. And sometimes it might just be one or two routes with a handful of stops. And if there's another way that 40 students, 30 students depending on on who lives there can safely get to school and we can still operate school for the rest of the district. That's a question I have. I don't know. And if it's unsafe for one child, then it's unsafe and we need to make sure that we're taking care of all of our students. But maybe there's alternative ways. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I think that's what we're interested in exploring as if we know that those families have an alternative method to get to school. We also have technology, that's one thing that we didn't necessarily have before where they might miss being with their peers that day, but they could still participate in the activities because a teacher's using Google Classroom for instance and sending videos home or whatever needs to happen for that child to not truly miss out on the day's academic portion.

Curtis Long (38:02): So the purpose of this podcast was to give families a little inside sneak peek at what happens behind the scenes when the temperature outside starts to drop precipitation in the air. Hopefully that won't happen again this year. But let's recap for parents cuz I think it's interesting cuz families don't know this. Let's just go really quickly, what happened? So three in the morning, three 30, Kathy Caulkins is getting up and out. She goes with a big smile on her face and you're searching roads. Then you call Cindy,

Cindy Detchon (38:28): I call our superintendent, she calls other superintendents. We make an informed decision and then I call you, you yeah. And and your colleagues in in the communications department. Our translators are on standby also, if there's a difference in the message, we have pred messages for typical closures, but sometimes there's a nuance and we need to change some of that language. And so we have interpreters, uh, our translators that translate those messages. We push it out via our communications channel. It goes to on flash alert, which goes across the TVs, it goes on the radio. If you're a staff member and a parent in this district, you get notified at least 12 different ways. But we haven't talked a little about though. However, when we have a two hour delay and then we end up canceling. Hmm. And that's a change in message. That's hard because parents may have already dropped uh, their child off at the bus stop and gone in late or they might have sent them to a neighbor and gone to work. And then we change what's happening. And that's only in rare circumstances where the weather just truly did not warm up like it was supposed to and it wasn't supposed to be clear. Or all of a sudden now power has gone out in several schools. So there's unique circumstances that re allow us to do that. It's not in our favorite, we don't like to do that.

Curtis Long (39:33): And then James and Cheryl, while Kathy's up traversing in the hills of Happy Valley, I'm sure you're at the transportation office and what's going on there that early in the morning?

Cheryl Crosgrove (39:42): We are just getting prepared <laugh> and ready to go for whatever's handed to us. Whatever the decision that's made, we're ready to roll with it.

Curtis Long (39:48): And I think it's important to say too, if it's fairly obvious to us that the next day is going to be pretty treacherous, we try to make that call the night before so families don't have to figure that out in the morning and and wait for that announcement.

Cindy Detchon (39:59): Yeah. Nine o'clock is kind of our cutoff period for the evening before. If we already know the next day's canceled.

Kathy Calkins (40:05): I just wanna thank everybody. I really do. It's just my drivers that come in even with a two hour delay, they come in and they wait and it gets more treacherous sometimes and they go home and and horrible conditions and they still come in. So I wanna thank my drivers for the essence of our team and just thank them and I wanna thank the families also because I know on Monday that was difficult for some of our families and and so I wanna thank the families for their patients and we always wanna try to do the right thing. And sometimes as hard as you try to do the right thing, things don't work out that way.

Curtis Long (40:37): So not always.

Kathy Calkins (40:38): Thank you for everybody. Thank you to everybody for that.

Curtis Long (40:40): And Kathy, you mentioned that you wanted to thank your drivers and I know there's a campaign right now to recruit more drivers. We're always looking for more school bus drivers and one of your campaign slogans is to be the kids' hero. Yeah. And I think they really showed that this last time during this weather, they were the heroes for those kids and are really heroes within our district to be able to do what they do. And to all of you as well, all four of our guests today, the title of this podcast is Proud to be N C S D. All four of you truly make us proud to be NCSD. So thanks for being here today. Thank you.

Curtis Long (41:09): Well NCSD families. The purpose of today's podcast was to make sure that when you hear this on the local news...

Newscaster (41:15): The North Clackamas School district, all giving kids a snow day.

Curtis Long (41:18): You have a little more insight on what goes into making such an important decision and how NCSD considers not only the safety of our nearly 17,000 students, but also our 2000 plus employees who include our heroic bus drivers who have to navigate those potentially icy hills and side streets.

Bus Driver On Radio (41:34): I have eight students on board. Everyone is ok. The driver's. Ok. So we just have to start the process

Bus Driver On Radio (41:41): Here that we do. Okay. I do have a mechanic on his way to you.

Curtis Long (41:44): All of them, including our guests today, Kathy Calkins, James Prichard, Cheryl Crosgrove, and Cindy Dethon. Truly make us Proud To Be N C S D.

Bus Driver On Radio (41:54): Thank you. Thank you.

Curtis Long (41:54): And just like the dispatcher said, thank you to all of our listeners today and thanks for continuing to find the Proud To Be NCSD podcast. The number of listeners continues to grow on all of our podcast providers. So if you miss any of our episodes, you can rest easy. Just like the dog who enjoyed a little celebrity status on the local news after plopping down for arrest in the middle of Alder Creek Middle School's football field.

Newscaster (42:16): And I do also love this picture out towards Alder Creek Middle School. This dog, a lot of pups out just enjoying this weather. So hopefully you had some fun out there yesterday.

Curtis Long (42:26): Make sure you tune in for another episode next week and we never mind how long it takes you.

Bus Driver On Radio (42:31): I just dropped off from Rowe for 550. I am headed back so it's probably gonna take me about another hour and a half to get back to base. So don't everybody leave me out here by myself.

Bus Driver On Radio (42:44): We would not do that to you.

Curtis Long (42:46): We'll talk to you then.

Bus Driver On Radio (42:48): I feel special. Good payment School bus driver appreciation day.

Curtis Long (42:54): Thanks for listening to the Proud To Be NCSD podcast in North Clackamas. We know that education is a community effort and we're so thankful that you and your family are a part of our community. Until next time, remember, there are always great things to see wherever you go in N C S D.