With everything from grading systems to school culture, Uni has a distinct way of doing things. At the beginning of this school year, our differences from other area schools were made more apparent to Uni High students. On Aug. 24 of this year, Unit 4 issued a closure notice for all of its schools, citing the “excessive heat warning.” Uni, however, remained open.
Unit 4 schools have a thorough and publicly available policy for hot weather closures, which can be found on their website. This policy includes four separate types of responses to extreme heat: revising the school calendar to start at a later date, early dismissal after 5 hours of instruction, early dismissal after 1 hour of instruction, or a full school closure. The policy also lists building plans to minimize the effect of extreme heat on students and faculty.
Unit 4 specifically lists their criteria for dismissal as when the heat index is 94º or above. Uni’s extreme heat policy, as outlined in our Student-Parent Handbook, reads as follows: “Uni’s cancellation policies do not follow those of local school districts. Cancellations will be determined by the director.”
Although it does list Uni’s policy for notifying parents, students, and faculty, there is no specific criteria for dismissal that is made publicly available.
“I’m comfortable with the processes and procedures we have in place at Uni, since we receive up-to-date information from the National Weather Service that helps us in our decision-making process,” wrote Uni Director Elizabeth Majerus — who, according to Uni’s handbook, is the authority on cancellations.
“There are advantages and disadvantages to setting firm criteria for school cancellation, early dismissal, late start, etc., and we would not rule out moving in that direction in the future,” wrote Majerus.
“I don’t think it was too much of an issue,” said Coleman Clougherty, a Uni senior.
“I heard some of the other schools had issues with their AC,” Clougherty said.
In another closure bulletin, Unit 4 cited specific issues with Centennial High School’s air conditioning systems as the reason for an additional Aug. 25 closure which only affected Centennial, not all of Unit 4.
Commenting on the differerence in the decision-making processes between Unit 4 and Uni, Uni junior Jane McCumber noted that “due to the size of our school, it would make sense that the director can make decisions when needed. With the larger Unit 4 schools who have hundreds more students than us, they can’t make those changes last minute without it being a big deal.”