Spokane schools will be closed Tuesday

Spokane Public Schools students are getting a generous Thanksgiving break after the district canceled classes for a fifth day Tuesday.

The five days of cancellations is the longest school closure since 2008, when the district also canceled school for five days because of a snowstorm. School was already scheduled to be out Wednesday through Friday for Thanksgiving break. Students will have had 12 days off when they head back.

All other local districts that closed after the Nov. 17 windstorm have reopened.

District spokesman Kevin Morrison said the decision came after city officials weighed in.

“They had some safety concerns” about opening the schools, Morrison said. “There are (downed) lines all over, even around schools that are fully operational.”

Tami DeForest, 14, said she misses school, as does her mom.

“She gets no break from us kids,” she said.

Both DeForest and Zara Samuels, 15, attend Lewis and Clark High School. Although they enjoy not having school, they said they miss seeing friends and are worried about making up schoolwork before the quarter ends.

“We have no time to catch up on our work and to get our grades up,” Samuels said.

Alex Gustaffe, 13, is in eighth grade at Chase Middle School. He said he likes the time away from school, but his home still doesn’t have power.

“My house is freezing,” he said. “The nice part is no school.”

The district calendar provides for five snow makeup days. The windstorm cancellations will be made up Jan. 29, Feb. 12, March 11, May 16 and June 16.

If any more school days need to be canceled this year, district officials will have to ask for a waiver from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Morrison said.

Families won’t be charged for after-school child care services during the five makeup days later this year, Morrison said.

“We’re just doing everything we can,” he said. “Avista has really stepped up. They’ve loaned us a few huge portable generators.”

Earlier Monday, Morrison said it was likely that schools would reopen Tuesday. However, after meeting with Spokane’s mayor, an Avista representative and the fire chief, Morrison said the consensus was that opening the schools would be too dangerous.

As of Monday afternoon, 11 schools didn’t have phone and fiber-optic connections, Morrison said. Only two schools didn’t have power. Right after the storm, 34 of the district’s 54 schools were without power, phones or both.

The district has its own fiber-optic cable network, which runs the schools’ communication centers.

“If we have a school where a switchboard is down, we cannot operate school really safely without that switchboard,” Morrison said.

Morrison said the district considered opening some schools and keeping others closed, like Central Valley School District did. However, the scope of the damage and the possibility of snow made them decide against it. A lack of phone service was of particular concern.

The volume of calls that come into a school on a typical day is so great that using personal cellphones wouldn’t work.

Although the five built-in snow days covered the days missed, some parents were frustrated by the closures.

Mike Barenti works from his South Hill home, which lost power for several days. He’s been watching his third-grade son, Jacob, who attends Spokane Public Montessori.

“It was kind of weird this weekend walking around,” he said. “It kind of had this post-apocalyptic feel.”