Fayette County Public Schools officials say they’re still making day-to-day decisions on when students can return to classrooms.
Road crews are still clearing ice from bus routes across Lexington, and some school parking lots remain frozen over.
Schools in Fayette County mostly have their own grounds crews and custodians remove snow and ice from their campuses. Five of the school district’s 70 campuses have contracted extra help for ice removal. Thompson said he’s confident conditions will improve later this week as temperatures warm up.
“Until we were able to get more expensive equipment on board, it took time to get to where we are today, but we're seeing vast improvement,” he said. “I think in the next 48 hours, you're really going to see some tremendous improvement, but our folks have worked extremely hard to take care of this situation.”
The largest problem facing the school district is the risk ice poses on bus routes. The district is talking with bus drivers to figure out when to put buses back on the roads.
“Ice is the most challenging situation that we can confront in terms of getting the buses in and out of the neighborhoods, and so once we feel that there's an acceptable level of risk, we'll be making a decision to go forward,” he said.
The school district is approaching two straight weeks of no in-person classes, which have ranged from Non-Traditional Instruction days to more traditional snow days.
The district says it costs around $223,000 for every NTI day from its Child Nutrition Food Services budget, but it also saves around $9,000 worth of fuel when buses don’t run.
District spokesperson Miranda Scully said there are also other factors involved in whether the school holds NTI days, like power outages. The Kentucky Department of Education allows districts 10 NTI days each year, with FCPS having used four so far.
