Wake County students will return to the classroom Wednesday on a two-hour delay.
Back-to-back winter weather events kept students home for the better part of the last week and a half. In between the storms, custodial staff members have worked to clear the snow and ice from campuses.
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“By and large, we depend on the school custodial staff to do the work here on site,” said Mark Strickland, the district’s chief of facilities and operations. “They've been out since Sunday morning at 8 a.m. Pretty much working 12-16 hours a day.”
Roads are primarily the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s responsibility, while school custodial staff are responsible for the campus entryways, walkways and sidewalks.
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Related: Wake County must consider all schools and road conditions when deciding to reopen
Strickland said some staff members struggled to get to their campuses due to road conditions.
Despite their efforts, the district still opted for a remote learning day on Tuesday. As part of the announcement on social media, the district shared photos of some campuses still covered in snow and ice on Monday.
“We're not set up here to push a lot of snow, not here in North Carolina,” Strickland said.
Strickland said he did not know where the photos were taken. However, he said the district is aware of some schools that tend to have issues when winter weather hits the area.
“I think we've had some issues in the northern part of the county with a few schools out there,” Strickland said, noting that sometimes, the building “shades the parking lot area so it's difficult to clean it off when it's filled with ice.”
According to Strickland, the district has five trucks available for plowing its more than 200 schools.
“We have got sunlight; we've been scraping; we put out a lot of salt,” he said. “Those schools that [don't] get a lot of sunlight ... those are the schools we go after first. Then, we hit the others as we can get to them.”
Strickland also revealed the district had run out of salt after the winter storm that hit central North Carolina the weekend of Jan. 23. He said they ordered another 40,000+ pounds of salt from Utah.
WRAL News asked how much salt the district has for the rest of the school year.
“We put most of that out, probably 35,000-38,000 pounds [of salt] over the last few days,” Strickland said. “We've exhausted what we have with this last effort. We'll order some more just to have some in reserves.”
WRAL News asked how much the salt costs, as well as other winter weather supplies and equipment. Strickland did not know the exact amount. We have not heard back from the district spokesperson.
“This is not typical weather for us in North Carolina,” Strickland said. “These multiple storms do cause us some concern because it is expensive.”
Strickland said his teams work as hard and as quickly as they can to make sure the campuses are safe for students and staff to return.
School board member Chris Heagarty sent WRAL News this statement:
“The most important thing I wish we could communicate to people who think we should open a school because the roads close to the school are clear is that school students and school staff may come from all over the county. In fact, because of housing costs in Wake County, we have a large number of schools where the teachers and staff cannot afford to live anywhere near the school. Many drive to work from Durham, Johnston, and Franklin Counties. So just because the roads in front of a school may be clear does not mean that we can get the people essential to operating the school there safely.”