PORTLAND, Ore. — School districts around western Oregon and southwestern Washington have delayed their start times Tuesday morning due to snow. That includes several schools in the Portland region.
For Portland Public Schools, students at Ainsworth, Chapman, Forest Park, Odyssey, Skyline and West Sylvan will start two hours later than normal and buses are on snow routes. The Corbett School District in Multnomah County is also on a two-hour delay to give time for snow on the roads to clear.
Sticking snow was mostly contained to higher elevations of the Willamette Valley Tuesday morning. Some areas saw a dusting up to an inch of snow.
Districts typically wait until the early morning hours to decide whether to delay start times or close for the day.
"We're always preparing, watching the forecast to see if there's going to be snow, ice or a combination," said Andrew Kilstrom, director of communications with the West Linn-Wilsonville school district.
KGW reached out to a couple of larger Portland-area districts, and they all have the same protocol: A team of drivers will be dispatched to circle around the area in the hours before sunrise to get a sense of the road conditions. If those drivers feel that the streets aren't safe, they'll let the district know.
"It's totally dependent on those road conditions, so we have a team of ten drivers who get up really early in the morning, around 3 or 4 (a.m.), testing the roads," Kilstrom said.
Kilstrom said his district builds three snow days per year into its academic calendar. If there are more than three closures due to inclement weather, the additional days would be made up in June at the end of the school year.
Two years ago, at the height of the pandemic, there was talk of getting rid of snow days altogether in favor of virtual learning, since teachers and students had already gotten used to the model. The Gresham-Barlow School District seriously considered making it that policy change, but so far it hasn't actually happened for any Portland metro district.