Students received an extra-long holiday break thanks to Mother Nature, missing two days last week due to extreme cold and one day Monday due to ice.

“We began monitoring the situation around 4:30 a.m.,” said Director of Schools Bobby Cox on the decision to cancel school Monday. “We were coordinating with 911 and deputies and they said that around 5 a.m. ice was forming on Highway 8 at Harrison Ferry Mountain. Then we had reports from the north end of the county that side roads were getting slick.”

The slick conditions came amid a winter weather advisory from the National Weather Service warning there could be slick road conditions during morning drive-time in Middle Tennessee toward the Cumberland Plateau.

“We were right on the line with our temperature,” Cox said of ice and sleet that mixed with rain overnight. “It’s really hard to predict.”

Cox said there was consideration to starting schools two hours late but he feared slick conditions could persist into the late-morning hours.

“The thing about starting two hours late is that buses still start rolling at 7:45 a.m. and there was still a prediction of ice at that time,” said Cox, noting the county’s fleet includes 55 buses that haul 3,000 students. “We want to be sure not to put the students in a dangerous situation so we are going to err on the side of caution.”

Given the questionable weather forecast when it came to the possibility of ice on the roads, Cox said an advisory was sent to parents via email over the weekend explaining contingencies when it came to closing schools.

“Our first priority is safety, but we also want to be transparent in what we do,” Cox said.

The school system still has six bad weather days stockpiled after using three since the Christmas break.