Slippery Rural Routes Lead To School Closure For Keystone Schools

Dozens of schools - including Broken Arrow, Bixby, Jenks, Muskogee and Sapulpa - have canceled class for Tuesday after snow covered much of Green Country Monday.

The superintendent of Keystone Schools near Sand Springs also made the decision to cancel class Tuesday, mainly due to a hill that leads to the campus.

It's a school district where the main roads really don't factor in to the decision, almost all the students who go to Keystone live off rural roads. It's a slick hill they all face that factors in the most.

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The snow was non-stop, so it was the same for the salt spreader on the hill at Keystone Schools.

While the students, like 11-year-old Parker Haling, didn't seem bothered by the blustery blast…

“I'm wanting to go snowboarding,” he said.

Parents, like Ronnie Spurgeon, were singing a different tune.

“I'm ready for summer,” he said.

Spurgeon expected a dusting, so when the snow really started coming down he decided he'd better pick his boys up from school, rather than have them ride the bus.

“We actually live in Hound Dog Holler is the name of it,” he said with a smile.

It's a name that can make you smile, unless you're driving a school bus around Hound Dog Holler in the snow.

“The bus has to do a turnaround at the end of the road and they can't hardly get turned around without getting stuck, so we do this so they don't have to,” Spurgeon said.

Keystone's superintendent, Rhett Bynum, said almost every student rides the bus and they pretty much all live out in the country.

“We drove around last night at 10:30 to check the roads and we thought, have school and everything will be fine today, and as soon as we show up today it's snowing and it's picked up as the day's gone along,” he said.

Several parents checked their children out early, but Bynum said closing school early wasn't a safe option. So once class let out, even with a snow-packed parking lot, the wheels on the bus still had to go round.

“We have a lot of faith in our bus drivers,” Bynum said.

The superintendent said calling off class Tuesday was an easy decision to make.