Columbia Public Schools, surrounding districts call off school for Monday

Columbia Public Schools have called off classes for Monday citing the inclement weather.

Main streets and highways in Columbia were clear Sunday, but snow and ice was left on many rural roads across Boone County.

“Our school district covers 300 square miles, so we have a combination of different types of roads and routes that we drive and we want to make sure that we’re able to get all of our students to and from school safely tomorrow and we just didn’t feel comfortable,” Michelle Baumstark with Columbia Public Schools said.

Several other surrounding public school districts also made the choice to call off school Monday including Centralia, Hallsville, Harrisburg, Sturgeon, Southern Boone and more.

“Our campuses are very icy, sidewalks and parking lots and just we’ll have a lot of people coming and going and that can present some danger,” Centralia Public Schools Superintendent Darin Ford said. “We’d like to have a full day tomorrow to get our campuses in the kind of shape that we feel is safe.”

School officials said another factor that led to the decision was possible refreezing with expected low temperatures through the night and into Monday morning.

Baumstark said CPS did not feel a two-hour delay would have been enough to make much difference on the roads.

You can find a full list of closings and cancelations for Monday here.