UPDATE – 5:45 p.m. – Montgomery County Public Schools announced at 5:42 p.m. on Thursday evening that county schools will be closed Friday. Administrative offices will open two hours late, according to the announcement.
Full message from MCPS:
Montgomery County Public Schools are closed on Friday, March 6, 2015 due to emergency weather conditions.
All school and community activities in school buildings also are canceled.
Administrative offices will open two hours late. Day care programs in school buildings may open at 10:30 a.m.
Original story – 2:30 p.m. – No decision has been made as of 2 p.m. Thursday about whether the school system will close schools again on Friday. Montgomery County Public Schools spokesman Dana Tofig said several factors will be weighed due to the amount of snow that is falling.
Tofig said the first thing school officials will examine in the decision-making process is whether roads are cleared, including many neighborhood streets. From there they also have to look at whether staff will be able to clear the school system’s 222 parking lots.
“We start with the high schools then work our way down to middle school and elementary school parking lots,” Tofig said. “It’s by size, but it’s a lot of square footage to clean and clear.”
Tofig also said that one third of the county’s teachers live in other counties, including Carroll, Frederick and Howard counties. So the school system must also consider their ability to commute to their jobs when making a decision.
“We’re not ready to say yet if we’re going to open or not tomorrow,” Tofig said. “Certainly parents should be thinking about the possibility of there being no school tomorrow.”
With six to 10 inches of heavy, wet snow expected to fall today, Tofig said it may be tough to get it all cleared in time for the buses to run tomorrow.
“We’ll go through our [standard] process,” Tofig said. “If we feel tonight there’s no chance we’ll open tomorrow, we’ll announce tonight.”
He added that if the school system feels there’s a chance the roads and parking lots may be cleared by tomorrow, then they’ll probably wait until just before 5 a.m. Friday to make the decision.
