By Marilyn McConahay
For the Record Herald, printed Friday, February 11, 2011
TIPP CITY/WEST MILTON – “We need some good weather,’ said Tipp City Schools Superintendent Dr. John Kronour this week after dealing with several weeks of snow, including last week’s vicious snow, ice and wind storm.
The good news is the National Weather Service in Wilmington believes there is hope for some better weather, at least for the next week or so.
“There aren’t any storm systems in sight right now for the area,” said Meteorologist John Franks of the Wilmington Office on Tuesday. “For the immediate future, there’s a warm-up. Friday it’s supposed to get warmer and then we’re looking at a high of 44 degrees for Sunday, 46 for Monday and 46 for Tuesday,” Franks said, “That should feel pretty warm after what we’ve had. But, beyond that, it’s just going to be a matter of ‘wait and see.’”
Local school districts are waiting to see as well, as most of them have reached or exceeded the three days of state-allowed calamity days for the 2010-11 school year. Normally, five days are allowed, but last year, then-Gov. Ted Strickland’s budget included only three for the current school year.
The weather-related problems that school superintendents dread resulted from higher than usual snowfall amounts and the recent snow and ice storm. The Tipp City and West Milton area has seen an average snowfall of three inches so far in February, based on measurements at the Dayton International Airport, Franks said.
This is about .9 of an inch above normal. January’s snowfall was 10.2inches, up from 9.9 inches normally, Franks said. The ice storm made conditions on area roads worse than usual and caused problems for property owners, with branches and limbs crashing down under the load.
“We saw it coming – it should not have caught anyone by surprise. In the Miami Valley, we have such an event every three to four years. There are always lines and trees down,” Franks said. He explained that more than a quarter inch of ice is rare and noted that some places in the area had more than one inch of ice from last week’s storm.
Schools Planning Makeup Days
The Milton-Union School District has had six snow days this winter and Tipp City has had five. Bethel has had eight days off, including seven snow days and an additional day due to a fire in one of the high school bathrooms. “We’re hoping the state will go back up to five calamity days,” said Milton-Union Superintendent Dr. Ginny Rammel, referring to Ohio House Bill 36, now in the legislation process.
Current law requires a minimum school year of 182 days, including a total of four days for teacher preparation and reporting and parent conferences. In addition, a school may be closed for up to three days in the 2010-2011 school year, and up to five days in subsequent school years, for various specified public calamities.
House Bill 36, introduced on Jan. 19, calls for the return to five days for the 2010-2011 school years. The bill also broadens the authority of school districts, public STEM schools, and chartered nonpublic schools to make up unexcused calamity days by lengthening remaining days in the school year by half-hour increments. “Gov. Kasich wants this to happen,” said Rob Nichols, spokesperson for the governor. “He wants it to return to five days and he wants it for this school year.”
“We have Spring Break, but too many people have plans during that time, and we don’t want to take Good Friday away from people, either. So, if we have to, we’ll add days at the end of the year. But we’re really hoping the snow days will be waived by the state,” Rammel said.
“I’m also hoping the suns shines and we have no more snow days to make up,” she added. Rammel emphasized that the snow day taken last week was not because of ice or snow on school grounds and parking lots. “And we have wonderful bus drivers, so that was not the issue, either. We just wanted to keep people out of harm’s way,” she said.
Tipp City Schools could also use President’s Day or Spring Break for makeup days, but as it stands now plans call for adding the district’s two extra days at the end of the year. “Tipp schools have had only five snow days so far,” Kronour said. “If the legislation is passed, we’ll have no problem, assuming we have no more snow days.”
The storm resulted in costs for overtime for maintenance crews, plus clean up for the two inches of ice. “That cost us some dollars, but I can’t tell you how much yet,” Kronour said.
Bethel Local School District faces the problems of a rural location, said Superintendent Jeff Cassell. “We’ve missed eight days – seven snow days and one due to a fire in a bathroom, so we have five to make up. We’ll make them up on May 31 and June 1, 2, 3 and 6,” he said.
If the House Bill is passed, Bethel will only have three days to make up. Cassell is hoping that will happen to spare students coming to school on hot June days. “We don’t have air conditioning in our 1918 building. The elementary classes meet on the third floor, so it’s really hard for them to concentrate,” he explained. Bethel was the only district in the area to have school last Friday, Feb. 4.
“Most schools had unsafe parking lots with all the ice. But we were lucky to have a wonderful crew that was able to clear up out lot,” Cassell said. As a first-year superintendent, Cassell said he was extra careful driving the roads to be sure they were safe enough to keeps school open. “Also, I talk with superintendents from Tipp City, Miami East and Tecumseh. Tipp City is more urban, but it gets the weather for the west before we do,” he explained. Cassell said the district has experienced added weather-related costs due to increased salt usage and more manpower hours, but doesn’t have a total to report yet.
Cities Face Problems with Contingency Plans
“Any time the Miami County Sheriff’s Office declares a Level 3 Emergency, you know it’s a serious situation,” said Scott Vagedes, city engineer and service director for Tipp City, “The ice made it especially difficult, but I think our crews did a really good job getting salt out on the main roads and getting them cleared quickly. We did have some trouble with some side streets and cul de sacs, but we do follow our priority plan.”
Between Jan. 31 and Feb.5, Tipp used 249 tons of salt for the ice storm. That includes the high school, which uses the city’s salt and is billed later. Work crews included personnel from the city’s parks, water and electric departments, which results in overtime costs.
Vagedes said the city has received both complaints and praise for their efforts to deal with the storm. “People need to know who maintains their area. For instance, we had a call from someone on Kent Lane who thought we didn’t get there fast enough. But that street is actually under (Monroe) Township,” Vagedes said. “This snow event was a difficult one because of the ice and the thickness of the ice we had to deal with. We could push the snow away and have a clear street, but this was ice,” he said.
Assistant Utilities Director Christy Butera reported there were some power outages during the ice storm, but they were not nearly as challenging as what DP& L had to deal with. “Power was out for around four hours in the Windmere area and we had outages in the area around Barbara Drive. Our crews were out all night,” Butera said. The crews had to deal with electric issues caused by downed limbs and branches that took down some distribution and service line.
Officials in the Village of West Milton say they were prepared for anticipated problems from the ice storm. “Street Supervisor Ben Herron and I discussed the village’s plans last week for about an hour and a half and by Tuesday we had our basic plans and contingency plans in order,” said Village Manager Tony Howard.
Herron detailed, “Just keeping up with the ice was our major issue. It’s more difficult than snow, staying on top of it so it doesn’t accumulate.” The streets were treated with salt brine in advance, and at one point West Milton had a crew of eight out keeping the public right-of-way passable and safe. “We had minor to moderate problems with trees and limbs down and I’d say we had less than 10 power outages. Our longest delay was to about three residents whose power was out until around noon Friday,” Herron said.
Herron said the village will provide free curbside limb pickup that will be scheduled as soon as the weather is warm enough. “We haven’t set a date yet. We want to wait until it is warmer so people don’t get hurt taking their storm debris to the curb,” he said. Herron estimates the storm cost about $6,000 to the village: $4,000 for salt, $800 in overtime, and a future $1,200 for limb pick-up.
“I thought it all went very well. I’ll put our crews up against crews of any size staff any time,” Howard said. “We also use the utility department to help out during an emergency like this one.”
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