ALAMANCE COUNTY, NC (WFMY) -- Parents on social media were frustrated with the Alamance-Burlington Schools’ decision to only have a two-hour delay instead of canceling classes on Monday.
The district said it checked with forecasts and made its decision after careful consideration. May Lee Morales was one of the many parents on the district’s Facebook page questioning why they made it.
“They should have canceled the day before, it was raining overnight, until noon time today,” she said, “but they didn’t. I was surprised when I heard the message.”
In Alamance County, there are several roads that are either closed due to flooding or have rising water on them.
Lori Bryan from the district said in a statement all the buses arrived at schools safely and without issue Monday morning, but some were rerouted due to those closed roads.
Another parent, who didn’t want to be named, said she was told she’d have to pick up her kids in the afternoon as buses would be unable to drop them off. She believes the district should have given more consideration to canceling classes.
”I feel like they should have been a little more cautious and maybe today, took precautions to just close,” she said.
The Haw River, near Haw River Elementary, is flooded and spilling over onto the nearby park and Lang Street. In just a few hours it went from barely covering the road to completely submerging it.
Lang Street is closed until further notice.
Statement by Alamance-Burlington Schools
For Monday, ABSS decided on a 2-hour delay schedule rather than normal operating hours after consulting with or using information regarding safety and timing provided by the National Weather Service, C-COM, Alamance County Emergency Management, DOT and Duke Energy in the pre-dawn hours.
The decision to delay was made for the safety of students and staff members and based on the forecast information available at the time.
Starting 2 hours later allowed more daylight for driver visibility in the rain as well as more time for weather crews that worked overnight to remove tree limbs and debris from the higher winds earlier in the day.
We did have a small number of our approximately 400-morning bus routes that were detoured early today where DOT blocked portions of some roads as a safety precaution due to a downed tree or water pooling on the road.
All 152 buses arrived at schools this morning after the 2-hour delay safely and without issue. We did have one bus experience a mechanical failure on Huffman Mill Road this morning that was not related to any weather issues.
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