The Anchorage School District apologized for not doing enough to keep parents informed Monday morning as icy roads tangled traffic and students on about 50 buses got to school about an hour or more behind schedule.
"There are going to be several conversations to make sure that what happened this morning doesn't happen again," said Heidi Embley, school district spokeswoman.
School District Superintendent Ed Graff said in a statement Monday afternoon that district transportation staff drove many roads around the municipality early in the morning. They talked with police as well as the National Weather Service and at 4:30 a.m. decided to keep Anchorage schools open.
But as the morning commute started and school buses left to pick up students, snow on the roads packed down and conditions grew icy, Graff said. Police closed roads and got reports of dozens of crashes. Two school buses got into "fender benders," Embley said. She said no students were injured.
Mostly, she said, "there was just a lot of waiting for traffic to move."
Around 8 a.m., the school district sent out a text message to all of its subscribers saying that most bus routes were running late due to road conditions, but did not specify just how late some buses would arrive.
The district and individual schools followed up with some parents about late buses, Embley said. But other parents did not know when the buses would pick up their children, or that their children sat on buses snarled in traffic as school began.
The school district received numerous emails, phone calls and social media comments Monday from upset parents, Embley said.
"We had a little bit of a breakdown in communication," she said.
By Monday afternoon, road conditions prompted the school district to cancel all after-school activities. Buildings would remain open for groups who had rented out the facilities and school board meetings would continue as scheduled, Embley said.
Graff said in the statement that parents who kept their children home Monday should contact the school. Administrators would mark the absences as excused.
Embley said the school district must do a better job in the future of tracking the school buses and communicating to parents where the buses are at in their routes.
Graff apologized in his statement Monday about the confusion the communication lapse caused families.
"We should have done a better job in communicating with parents, particularly about late bus routes," he said. "We will develop a better plan to ensure the situation with bus routes doesn't repeat itself. My staff is learning from today's situation."