Tomorrow, Coppell ISD will be monitoring potentially freezing precipitation and hazardous road conditions as it makes a  decision on whether or not to cancel school for the district.

Today, there were many concerns voiced by students about tomorrow’s drop in temperatures and the potential of rainy weather. All the concerns raised by students have revealed the processes used by the district to determine whether school needs to be cancelled or not. 

“[The decision to cancel school] is about transportation,” Coppell associate principal Sean Bagley said. “If a school bus can’t get students somewhere safely or if there is an issue with that, then that is the main factor [that causes school to be closed].”

Not many know of the people that go into making the decision to cancel school. Many assume that the CHS principal plays a role in making that decision but in reality, it is a tight knit circle of three who make that decision.

“Cancelling school falls on Brad Hunt (Superintendent), Sid Grant (Associate Superintendent) and Genaro Lopez (Director of Facilities and Maintenance),” Bagley said. 

CISD works in relations with neighboring school districts, Dallas County, National Weather Service, as well as many daycares and Durham School Services in making the decision to cancel school. The process of actually cancelling school is made after an inspection of the roads and school conditions the morning of the school day. 

“The real stuff is, at 3:30 a.m., [Hunt, Lopez and Grant] get out and start driving, they look at road conditions and they decide whether they think it is safe for out on the roads,” CISD assistant athletic director Dr. Nicole Jund said. “The priority is the safety [of our students and staff.”

Tomorrow also happens to be signing day for Coppell athletes and the potential cancellation of school could interfere with that as many of the athletes have family in town to see them sign to the college of their choice.

“If school is cancelled then we will postpone signing day to another day, if school is delayed, that’s what we’ll have to decide throughout the course of today,” CISD Athletics Director Kit Pehl said.

Pehl and Jund emphasize there is no set process, however, and the schedule may change.

“Obviously, we will work with the families on that, because really signing day is about the kids and the families that are involved,” Jund said. “They have family in town, some of them, and so we want to make sure that they are able to be as participatory as possible but truth be told, we don’t want to ask [the families] to come up here when we can’t let anyone else up here. ”

The students and school staff will know if school is cancelled tomorrow by 5:30 a.m. tomorrow, according to the Coppell ISD website.  Parents and students will be notified via CISD alert text, email, phone call as well as postings to Facebook and Twitter. 

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