HASTINGS, Iowa (KMTV)
- Video shows snow cover buses along Highway 34 near Hastings, a Zoom interview with Stanton and Fremont-Mills Superintendent Dave Gute, and an interview outside in front of the East Mills Community Schools buses.
- There are a lot of factors that go into a district's decision to cancel school. In rural districts, they're often busing kids along country roads that may not be clear.
- “For me, for taking care of two schools, I have to get up, say 2:30 in the morning and then drive as many roads as I can and end up back over here and then report to the superintendents by 5 o’clock.”
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Here at East Mills Elementary School in Hastings, Iowa bus director. Curtis Riley, will be firing up these buses to take kids home from school in a little bit.
I'm your Southwest Iowa neighborhood reporter Katrina Markel and while East Mills is open today, some other neighboring districts are not. I spoke with the superintendent of Stanton and Fremont-Mills about his decision-making process when it comes time to either cancel school or leave it open during bad weather.
I spoke to Dave Gute over Zoom because he said the roads near Stanton were worse than communities farther west.
The district was planning a delayed start Wednesday, like Red Oak, but…
GUTE: “...It was my principal – was out driving this morning and, just said, on a hard surface road there’s drifts and they were going down it in a four-wheel drive and didn’t feel good about a bus trying to get down that road so we switched to a remote learning day.”
It’s not easy for parents...
GUTE: “You try to get that information out there as soon as you can … because their lives don’t stop, their work lives don’t stop either so you try to think about all those things, but there’s not an exact science or a checklist..."
Curtis Riley is the bus director for one of Gute’s districts – Fremont-Mills – but I met up with him 25 miles away at East Mills in Hastings, which was open Wednesday.
RILEY: “For me, for taking care of two schools, I have to get up, say 2:30 in the morning and then drive as many roads as I can and end up back over here and then report to the superintendents by 5 o’clock.”
Katrina Markel: “It must be a little bit tough when you’re talking about gravel, tertiary kind of roads….”
RILEY: “Right, and we have had them get stuck and we usually try to go pull them out with either a school bus or our pickup.”
Distance and resource sharing are factors…
‘And it’s hard, you know, when I'm here and if i have a bus get stuck over at Fremont-Mills, which is, you know, what is it? 25 miles from here…”
Katrina Markel: “How clear are the county roads right now?”
Riley: “Not good.”
As brutal cold arrives later this week, districts will be looking at temperatures as well as road quality.
In Hastings, I’m your Southwest Iowa neighborhood reporter, Katrina Markel.
