school closing

Good evening, folks.  As I wrap up my campaign finances for the Superintendent primary, I was struck by an irony that would be quite funny if it did not involve our children's safety.  I could have entitled it, "A Funny Thing Happened to me on the way to the Election," but since it is not funny and it involved the second most spoken mantra by the Clay County School district, "Safety is our Number One Priority" (right behind "Clay County has Good Schools,"), I will stick with the mantra.

As you know with TS Fay approaching Tuesday morning, Duval County Schools announced at daybreak that after-school activities were cancelled, and that they would soon announce if school would be cancelled.  That decision was made before school ended, to include both Wednesday and Thursday.  In the meantime, the silence from Clay County School District was both deafening and defining, as they refused to communicate any information to the parents. Tuesday Evening, after only the second day of school, the district had also scheduled Open House at the high schools.  Parents flooded the phonelines, wanting information, so much so that we finally received an automated (and sounding particularly perturbed) call from a principal that stated the the open house was still on and school was still on and their number one priority is our children's safety.