The answers you're looking for

Archived 1/5/2012

Is it possible for the HFM BOCES website to display the school closings and delays relevant to the HFM districts?

That certainly would be helpful, but not really practical in a manner that would benefit anyone.

Each district makes it's own determination about delays or closing, and posts its information through the automated School Closing Network and other internal notification systems.

The decision to close HFM BOCES is similar but slightly more complex.

Career and Technical Center Director Jay DeTraglia is HFM BOCES' "point person" with the districts. Each school district calls Mr. DeTraglia with their decision to delay or close when conditions warrant. Five local districts - Amsterdam, Broadalbin-Perth, Johnstown, Gloversville and Fonda-Fultonville - drive the decision for HFM BOCES to cancel educational programs for the day.

If at least three of these five districts delay their start time or close altogether, HFM BOCES will follow suit. Mr. DeTraglia then notifies local media, and initiates the internal emergency call list system that ultimately notifies HFM BOCES employees of the situation.

While communication between schools and BOCES does takes place on those wild winter mornings, the process is managed by each individual school.

Closings are usually posted on school district websites, and nearly every area TV and radio station links to the School Closing Network.

Collecting the information and posting it to the BOCES website is a manual process, and except when BOCES closes or delays opening, no one is updating the website at 5 a.m. when those decisions are made.

The best alternative we can offer is to post this link to one of the many media outlets for the School Closing Network.

[Back]

© HFM BOCES. All rights reserved. This site is published according to the Web publishing guidelines
 of HFM BOCES, in cooperation with Capital Region BOCES Communications Service.