School went virtual Feb. 12 and then completely closed for the week of Feb. 15-19 due to a severe winter storm.

“We had so many families suffering with power outages and no WiFi,” principal Joey McQueen said.

Originally, the plan was for students to complete remote learning for the week.

“The decision to close school, not do remote learning, was due to the electrical outages throughout the area,” superintendent Chane Rascoe said. “Unfortunately, remote learning simply wasn’t feasible.”

As the storm began Feb. 11, students attended school, but Rascoe emailed LISD recipients at 12:30 p.m. to inform them that school would end at the regular time, but all campuses would transition to virtual learning the following day.

  “The forecasts we had at that time indicated the temperature and conditions were  to improve after lunch thus allowing our kids and staff to travel safer later in the day,” Rascoe said. “While these forecasts changed after the time period to release early, it was the information we had at the time to go off of.”

According to Rascoe, the district can only call early releases at certain times, and all the times available were when the weather was hitting the hardest.

“Releasing our kids home early without proper notice places our kids in harm’s way, especially on our elementary campuses, due to their parents or their caregivers not being home,” Rascoe said.
Wind chills last week got into the negatives and brought in plenty of snow, causing power outages all around the county, loss of water and loss of WiFi.

“With all of the power outages and lack of WiFi, we felt the students would have struggled in getting their assignments turned in,” McQueen said. 

Students returned to school yesterday after the weather improved over the weekend.

“Anytime our buses can run usually constitutes when we can be in school,” McQueen said.