by Tori Krogh and Ashley Freund

With the frigid temperatures coming and going in our region, AHS has been experiencing school closings and a couple of unordinary schedules. Most people do not know what happens behind the decisions of late starts and not having school. With the help of superintendent Dr. Michael Amstein and ACSD transportation director Dave Eckles, snow days are decided in a strategic way that protects our school community.

 “What we try to always take account of is the safety of our students and our employees,” said Amstein. Paying close attention to roads on questionable mornings, Eckles and Amstein work together on the decision making process. They wake up around 4:30 am and check the roads to see if they are fit for buses, employees, and students to travel on. Amstein takes the south and east sides of town, and Eckles takes the north and west sides, along with a few gravel roads.

Another component of providing accurate safety is always keeping contact with surrounding schools. Amstein communicates with other superintendents in order to keep everything in the area consistent. To maintain that regularity, much attention is given to local forecasts, especially for decisions that need to be made the night before. Amstein believes those weather reports are accurate more often than not, so having a watchful eye on them is always important.

Sometimes Amstein gets responses of disagreement in accordance with his decisions to keep or cancel school. Even if weather turns out better or worse than he had planned, Amstein always has a positive outlook on things, saying, “If we didn’t lose any kids or employees, it’s okay. You never want to put yourself in that situation.”

Before becoming the superintendent of the Atlantic Community School District, Amstein actually had experienced a terrible situation at his previous school that consisted of the death of a student in correlation with dangerous weather. With that, he always holds this critical decision making to an extremely high standard of overall assurance. “My first concern is always the safety of kids.”