Worcester's late call angers school parents.

Byline: Shaun Sutner

Parents were angry.

It wasn't because Worcester public school officials had closed the schools for a snow day. Not surprisingly, the great majority of their colleagues across Central Massachusetts and the state had done just that as well.

Rather, it was because the Worcester officials failed to call off school the night before, as did a few school districts in the region, including Athol-Royalston, Auburn, Uxbridge, Warren-West Brookfield, and the Abby Kelley Foster Charter Public School in Worcester.

"They should have canceled school Sunday night," said a woman whose daughter attends the Norrback Avenue Elementary School in Worcester. "For a working family it would have allowed them to prepare better."

This parent, who did not want her name published, was one of nine people who posted comments on the Telegram & Gazette Web site yesterday complaining about Superintendent James A. Caradonio's decision, even though he was in the mainstream of school administrators dealing with the first snowstorm of 2008.

"With a definite and impending storm such as this ... it certainly would have been easier for Worcester parents who need to make arrangements for child care," wrote one poster, identified only as "reader."

By way of response, Mr. Caradonio noted that while some weather reports indeed were forecasting heavy snow overnight, meteorologists sometimes have been known to get it wrong.

The Worcester superintendent also pointed out that with three snow days already this year and winter barely a month old, the district is alarmingly close to exhausting the five snow days it has budgeted for 2007-08 school year. Any more than that and the school year would have to be extended beyond the scheduled June 12 closing day, incurring the wrath of many parents.

"We live in New England. One year, I called it off the night before and it was sunny in the morning," Mr. Caradonio said. "And where's the harm? What's the difference if you know at 9 o'clock at night or six in the morning?"

Mr. Caradonio said he made his decision at 4:15 a.m. and placed a call to a designated school official, who triggered a standard protocol for notifying media outlets and bus companies that there would be no school that day.

It worked out differently in the Quaboag Regional School District, which is made up of the rural towns of Warren and West Brookfield in western Worcester County.

"We're a unique district. We have a lot of hilly areas and rural roads. It's really not a question," said Joseph Scanlon, the school district's director of finance and operations, who, as it turned out, was the only administrator to make it to work yesterday. "Any time there's an early storm, we tend to call them early."

And in Auburn, interim Superintendent William E. Allen also decided Sunday night, about 8:30, with little agonizing.

Mr. Allen said he felt his biggest concern was safety and allowing parents to make plans for children who would be home all day.

"There was this storm barreling down on us, and it didn't take too much by way of needing more information," he said, noting that the storm lived up to its billing. "It snowed and it snowed heavily. We had quite a bit of wet snow. It was one of our good old-fashioned nor'easters."

At Worcester's Abby Kelley Foster, it was an entirely unique situation, school officials said.

Superintendent Robert M. Harrington said he'd like to accept praise for his move to close the school as of Sunday night, but he really made the call for another reason: a severe flood in the middle school-high school section of the 1,400-student, kindergarten through Grade 12 school.

In fact, the middle school-high school will remain closed today while workers repair the damage, Mr. Harrington said.

Usually, the charter superintendent said, he would do exactly what his counterpart, Mr. Caradonio - with whom he has often sparred on the politically contentious issue of charter school funding - did.

"I totally understand what he did. We've both been in this business for a long time," Mr. Harrington said. "I'd like to take credit for being prophetic, but I'd do the same thing. We had a special situation."

Staff reporter Bill Fortier contributed to this report.

Contact Shaun Sutner by e-mail at [e-mail].