Snow snow go away!!

We've had a lot of snow this week, by "a lot" I mean a lot for SN school transport to have a problem, but certainly not a lot by Canadian standards!!

So SN transport was off Monday, Tuesday and Thursday this week, and probably would have been today if I hadn't kicked up a stink with the Leader of the County Council! He's a very nice man, apart from when he went on the news on Tuesday and blamed school closures on lazy teachers and said he had written to Heads to tell them to dock teachers pay if they didn't make "reasonable efforts" to get to work. That was like a red rag to a bull for me, so I got on the internet, found his email address and sent him an angry email telling him that this teacher would have gone into work if his council hadn't cancelled all SN transport!!! The official reply yesterday (after a number of personal emails from him that were very supportive) was along the lines of 'elf and safety' with icy roads blah blah blah. To which I replied, hang about, the roads are too dangerous for SN transport but OK for teachers to use!!??!!! But that was a side issue by this point as I had realised that many of the mainstream schools made an effort to open but all special schools automatically shut when SN transport was cancelled. My school was open foru days and on the fifth staff were still expected in by 9.30 but of course I couldn't go as Laura was off.

There shouldn't automatically be a correlation between SN transport being cancelled and special schools being closed, as some parents may live in accessible parts of the area and be able to take their SN child to school (as I would have done on Tuesday at least). Certainly there isn't a correlation in other parts of the country. He is investigating that one for me and providing some statistics, such as what percentage of SN schools were shut each day (my guess after listening to the lists on radio Leicester is 100%!!!) and how many special schools were open to pupils if transport was cancellled (definitely think this was 0%). Meanwhile I have rung Laura's school and asked what their school policy - they're getting back to me shortly.