Climate change could make school closure decisions even more difficult

P.E.I.'s Public Schools Branch says there were seven "snow days" this winter, which is on par for a typical winter.

But those missed days of school came on the heels of five to 10 days lost after post-tropical storm Fiona in September.

Add it all together, and PSB director Norbert Carpenter says that's a lot of missed classes due to weather.

But what impact could climate change have on school closures in the future?

"I think the real question here is, 'Do those unprecedented events become more routine?' And if they do, I do believe people need to come together and say 'What can we do differently?'" said Carpenter. 

Environment Canada's senior climatologist David Phillips says extreme weather events like Fiona will likely become more common.

And in the winter, Islanders should expect more messy, tough-to-forecast days, with a mix of precipitation that can make roads slick and hard to clear.

"When your average temperature goes from –8 to –2 [degrees], you're probably going to see a 60 per cent increase in freezing rain. So stay tuned. You think it's weird and wild now. It's only going to get more so, in the years to come," he said. 

Carpenter said officials have started discussing potential alternatives to shutting down in bad weather. 

That could include opening schools for students who can get a drive and offering online learning to those that can't.

But when it comes to the idea of moving class online, Carpenter said that has to be seen through a "lens of equity." 

"If we're having remote learning, does everyone in the province have the ability to get online? Does everyone in the province have resources available to them?" he said. 

"Will we have to adapt because of climate change? We may have to. So these discussions may amp up in the future, because we hope Fiona was an anomaly.  But maybe it wasn't.  And if we're faced with another situation like that, I really do feel people need to get around a table and start talking about how we may look at things differently."  

Dave Gillis is the Public School Branch's director of transportation and risk management. 

He said with 18,000 students on buses and many kilometres of roads across the province — many of them rural — closing schools can be a challenging decision. 

"We do get phone calls where parents are saying 'I'm looking out my window and it's beautiful. How come there's not school?'" he said. 

"We do have a changing climate. And I do think that does have an impact.... We do have more of those in-between types of days where maybe they're predicting snow and it comes in as rain. Or maybe the opposite."

He said safety is top of mind. 

"I'd rather take 25 calls on a day where the weather clears up and parents say kids should be in school, than the one where something bad happens and you're dealing with a tragedy. That always weighs on our mind," Gillis said.