Late School Openings Wreak Havoc On Area Working Parents' Morning Schedules
By Kim Glovas
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- When icy road conditions or other weather hazards force schools to open late, parents are stuck between leaving their kids home alone or getting to work late.
So, how do parents cope?
"Kind of upsets the apple cart a little bit," one mother told KYW Newsradio today, "because we're scrambling to make arrangements. And it also depends on when we get that call, whether we get the call the night before or if we're getting the call at 5:30 in the morning. It's really difficult to call somebody at 5:30 in the morning and say, 'Hey, can you help me and come over, drive through the bad weather, so we can get to work on time?"
Some people are luckier than others.
"My husband has a very flexible job, so he would normally stay home, or come home early if he had to, or go in late for school issues, so it's never been a problem for me," said another woman we spoke with.
It's bad enough when you have one child to get to school, but Angela Beatty has three.
"HIgh school, middle school, and elementary," she notes. "So, you pretend that instead of 7:30 drop-off, it's 9:30, 9:45, 10:15 drop-off."
Fortunately, Beatty says, her husband was able to head in to work later.
"He dropped off our sons at the high school and middle school. And the instead of me waiting with all the messy traffic and the delays, I paid the extra money to put my daughter into the before-care program at her school," she says.
Other parents have arranged elaborate babysitter-support networks, with regular babysitters, backup babysitters, and other parents to make sure they have every option covered before they get the news that their child's school is "opening two hours late."
