The Infant Toddler Center at Vassar College (ITC) and the Wimpfheimer Nursery School (WNS)’s School Closing and Delay Policy is designed to comply with New York State regulations for operating a licensed day care facility. These state regulations pertain to the safety of the young children within our care. There are three key issues: 1) meeting our adult:child staffing ratios during operating hours; 2) having fully operational heat, running water and electricity; and 3) having fully accessible, cleared emergency exits and access to emergency personnel. These standards are in place year round; inability to meet these standards may result in a temporary center or school closing regardless of the source of the problem (e.g. winter weather conditions; broken pipes; comprehensive staff illness).
In winter weather, we make every effort to stay open for as many hours as possible. Driving conditions are a primary factor in determining whether a closing or delay is appropriate. The ITC and Wimpfheimer staff must be able to travel to work safely from their homes in distant towns including Highland, Kingston, Milton, Millbrook, Wappingers Falls, Hopewell Junction and others. We need enough staff present to provide for the children in our care per our regulations, and once we are here, we need to ensure that the children and our staff can return home safely at the end of our operating hours. Substitutes are not an option to meet our staffing requirements, since our subs are also parents who have children home from school when the schools are closed. For these reasons, the ITC and WNS may be opened on a delayed schedule, closed early, or closed for the whole day.
For winter weather, decisions for school closings and delays are made between 6:00 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. on the day in question. This is to allow the director time to collect the most recent information possible while still allowing enough time for parent and staff notification of the decision. In the event of extreme weather such as a blizzard, closing decisions can be made the previous evening.
There are two options for parents and teachers to obtain information in the event of a school closing or delay:
If you hear information change on the radio (e.g. Spackenkill goes from a delay to a closing), call the answering machine again; a revised message will be posted if we change our initial decision. The message will clearly state: “This is a revised message for the morning of February 19…” delay.
We generally follow the Spackenkill Central School District when tracking information for a school closing or delay. This information is useful as an initial indicator that there may be a hazardous weather situation developing. However, this is only a guideline and each decision is based on frequent, direct information from various weather services.
Remember to Call the Office. It is always helpful for us to know whether or not to expect a child on any given day. It is especially helpful to know if your child will be attending on a day when we are using a winter weather schedule (delays and alerts). We adjust our staffing according to the number of children we are expecting on days with adverse weather conditions. Please call the answering machine at either the ITC (437-7648) or WNS (437-5630) and leave a message if your child will not be attending school.
We also have successfully implemented a Winter Weather Alert plan, which has allowed the school to remain open as long as possible on questionable weather days. In this plan, parents are informed that the ITC and WNS will be on a Winter Weather Alert via the answering machine message, or upon arrival in the morning (look for posted signs on the doors). Next to the sign-in sheet, parents are asked to leave phone numbers where the person(s) responsible for picking up their child(ren) can be reached. The center/school will be open but parents will need to be able to have their child picked up with a one-hour notice. Parents choosing to have their children at the center/school are agreeing to have arrangements in place to pick their child up with one hour notice. This plan can only continue to work with full cooperation of the parents. Please carefully make your decision about whether your child can attend his/her program on days when a winter weather alert is in effect.