Snow Days, Severe Storms, and Soccer Games: A Coordinated Response to School Safety

Snow days are a student’s dream, a meteorologist’s nightmare, and a sticky situation for school superintendents whose decision could alter the daily routine of hundreds (if not thousands) of families within their district. Snow is just one of the many dangerous weather hazards school districts need to plan for in the state of Kansas. While many school districts elicit the help of a private forecasting service to help them through those stressful winter months, few have gone to the extent of Wichita School District USD259 to ensure all-season, all-hazard safety for their students and staff. This session will detail the operations of USD259’s “Weather Team,” a close-knit group of school officials who have teamed-up with meteorologists from AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions and the Wichita National Weather Service office. During this session, you will learn about USD259’s mission to leverage the private-public partnership to ensure they have a complete understanding of the risks specific to their location, and then execute on precise heat acclimate plans, recess weather safety plans, and severe and winter weather response plans specific to their unique thresholds. The intent of this session is to inspire further public-private partnerships within the Weather Enterprise and encourage meteorologists to challenge the current paradigm of hazardous weather planning and response.