Columbia Public School District late start was success

The cold weather is causing another late start for Columbia Public Schools on Thursday.

On Wednesday it was the school district’s first late start time.

“It went very smoothly, our buses had time to warm up this morning,” said Michelle Baumstark with Columbia Public Schools.

Superintendent Peter Stiepleman tweeted Wednesday saying, “Why the delay? The real worry is will buses start. Diesel fuel can gel- the two hours makes us comfortable our 9K kids will get here safely.”

“And the boilers were working,” said Baumstark. “That is another challenge because we have mixture of varying buildings so we want to make sure we are able to operate those appropriately.”

Last year eight snow days meant seven extra days students had to make up in the spring.

“We literally had a weekend to prepare for our summer school program where we have close to 9,000 students participating, that’s not a lot of time to get our buildings flipped. We don’t want to be in that position again,” said Baumstark.

Late starts could help since those days do not have to be made up later.