Fort Mill and Rock Hill Schools release statements regarding not cancelling school or scheduling E-Learning

With the weather system Debby hitting the Tri-County hard in the form of rain and wind, many school districts in the area made the decision to either cancel or have an E-Learning day. York, and Clover decided not to have school while Chester did an E-Learning day. Lancaster County does not start school till next week but closed their district offices to staff. Fort Mill and Rock Hill, however decided to have school on normal schedule. It was the first day for both districts.

Statement from Fort Mill

The district works closely with York County Emergency Management and the National Weather Service when making these decisions. Up until the advisory that was issued this morning after our buses had already begun routes, there was no indication of the winds reaching the thresholds for school to be cancelled. Following the alert we continued to monitor the conditions in our area. If any of the high winds or wide spread flooding had occurred we would have stopped the buses immediately until it was safe to resume traveling. This is the protocol for a weather event once bus routes have begun. Fortunately, while the rains were heavy we did not see the high wind gusts or wide spread flooding so we were able to continue with transportation.

Statement from Rock Hill

Dear Rock Hill Schools Family,

We are working closely with our meteorologists and emergency officials to keep a careful eye on the weather today and plan to stay the course on our regular operating hours.

Some families chose to keep their students home today and we fully support our parents and guardians to make that decision. We encouraged safe travels to those of you who reached out and did not mark tardies today to ensure families had time to travel with caution. While we did take attendance, the purpose was to know which students were on campuses. Our attendance team will be working through coding today’s attendance with grace in support of respecting parental discretion.

We are immensely proud of our transportation team for getting our kids to school this morning safely with no major issues. We trust they’ll take their time and bring all our students home safely this afternoon.

As always, we value our collaboration with families as we navigate difficult decisions. Thank you for your partnership and for those of you who have reached out thanking our bus drivers and our teammates who worked car rider lines.

With gratitude,

Dr. Tommy Schmolze