The tough decision of when to call a snow day usually falls to local school districts.
Superintendents base their calls mainly on two factors: the safety of students and the ability of school buses to navigate roads.
But weather forecasts can be wrong, placing school leaders in a tough spot.
Should they decide to cancel classes based on an erroneous forecast, they run the risk of unnecessarily disrupting children's learning and parents' schedules.
If they stay open, as St. Paul and Minneapolis did on Monday, they run the risk of a fiasco.
On rare occasions, the state's governor has stepped in to declare a statewide snow day.
In the winter of 2014, Gov. Mark Dayton famously canceled public school classes across Minnesota. The weather forecast at the time called for temperatures of 25 to 35 degrees below zero in the early morning, with windchills of 60 degrees below zero in some corners of the state.
Arne Carlson, during his tenure as governor during the 1990s, canceled school three times because of extreme weather.
Staff Report
