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Note: School Status is reset in the middle of the day in preparation for the next school day.
If your school is NOT listed, that means we have not heard from that school, so assume a regular schedule
until you see it listed here. Check back often as updates come in at various times.
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We usually don't report "Openings" unless the situation at hand is very confusing and needs clarification. For
instance, with a college, if one campus is closed, but another campus is open.
We do not report business closings, delays, or openings with the exception of large industries where a large amount of
people are affected. We apologize for this, but we have to focus our attention to the larger organizations affecting
parents and children because and we are under a serious time crunch on these mornings trying to get the information out on
Radio, TV, School Closings Line, and on the Internet. We do encourage small businesses to develop their own calling
system to let their employees know when they are closed.
Other Notices:
Cutoff time for morning announcements to reach us: 7:15am ... we
request notices much earlier as this doesn't give listeners and viewers much notice. But we do stop updating our recordings,
graphics, and website at 7:15am for the morning closings report. We appreciate your cooperation and understanding.
ARE WE NOT COVERING YOUR SCHOOL SYSTEM? It's not because we don't want
to, it's because your superintendent or appointed official isn't contacting us for cancellations. Please use our CONTACT FORM to let us know which school you would like for us to include and we will see if we can work out future inclusions
with that school.
To keep our list of closings/delays small and easy to manage, we request that only organizations with 50 or
more students and/or employees use our services ... where mass media is necessary for last minute contact.
Smaller organizations who can easily send emails or make a few phone calls will not be included in our list of closings. WHY???
Are we trying to NOT serve the community? Not at all, we are trying to serve the MAJORITY of the population better.
- Cancellations and Delays are only accepted on Private, Non-published phone numbers at WKRK. And even with that,
a prearranged password is required for us to proceed with a closing. This prevents pranksters from trying to trick
us into announcing a school closing. If you have not made prior arrangments with WKRK to handle closings, your organization
will not be included on our list.
- Why do we limit the size of the organization to a minimum of 50 students/employees? I'm a one-man
operation on school-closings mornings. I do everything. The large public schools (the organizations affecting
the most people) could not get thru if the phone stayed busy with those small organizations who could alert their people via
telephone or email. (25 children ... 5 teachers assigned to calling 5 parents ... wouldn't take terribly
long.) But the better solution that works for most smaller organizations is to alert the parents
or employees, "We will observe the same schedule as the public school system in our county. If XXXX
County Schools are closed, then we will be too, If they are delayed, then so are we." It takes away the
confusion. It takes away your phone calls. Plus, our school systems have a large area to cover and are concerned
about safety of their students. They are equipped to make responsible decisions. Following their Inclement Weather
Decision may be a useful policy for your organization. ALSO: WKRK used to be just a
radio station. It used to be easy to include a whole list of closings on the radio. We serve the public so much
better now. Not only do I air closings/delays on 1320AM, I now create and publish a complete list of closings
on this website. I also create full screen graphics for each school that displays on our Cable TV Channel 25.
Then, I call in to update our WeatherLine at 835-3200 for those people who can't pick up the radio and don't have internet
access and don't have Cable TV. Each time I get a new information, I have to update all 4 channels:
Radio, TV, Internet, Phone Line. The whole cycle takes about 20 minutes each time I get a new closing. Please remember
... since no one pays me to do all this, I don't wake up employees at 4:00am and have them come help me ... this is a public
service. I do it all myself. And with today's technology, from any location in the world. I've done school
closings from Las Vegas one year. (Also, for the radio broadcast, I have to record all closings and a quick blurb of
the weather into an exact 40 second file for it to air 4 times in the morning. Otherwise our programming doesn't sound
smooth.) I realize that I can't be everything to everyone. I occasionally get irrate emails and phone calls because
they feel that I'm not serving their needs. But I do have to put limits on what I can do. I can't do all the updates
... if I'm having to continuosly answer the phone. So I do have to prioritize my time, and prioritize the information
I make available to the public. I have to focus on what affects the most amount of people. I apologize to the
smaller organizations who feel they aren't getting served. I hope my suggestions above will help solve communication
problems. My main concern is to be as efficient as I can with the resources I have available. We hope that this
site is useful to you. If you are an organization that does meet our criteria and would like to be included in Closings/Delays,
please contact WKRK.
- There were other random reasons we felt we needed to make our system more efficient ... some businesses were keeping our
phone line tied up asking us for free advertising mentions during this peak listening period ... to tell people their business
was open, and that XXX was on sale today, without wanting to buy advertising. Things such as this really took away from
our doing a good job getting critical information out to the public and delayed the organized who really did need to get thru
to us ... from getting thru to us. So we had to tighten up our rules. Again, we appreciate your understanding,
and apologize if anyone feels alienated.
Keep checking this page often ... as information becomes available, we will post to
our website first ... before we go on air with announcements. (We read from this list.) Depending on your browser
cache settings, some people may have to press REFRESH or <CTRL> and REFRESH for new information to appear.
Whenever school is in session, our
goal is to let you know as soon as we find out about school delays or closings. This website is a great place
to get the information. If you're unable to be near your computer ... or as a backup (in case the website isn't working),
we also alert the Tri-State by using the following means of communication:
Radio:
1320 AM
Website Broadcast: www.country.am and click LISTEN LIVE or download one of our Listening Tools
Cable TV:
WKRK's Channel 25 in Cherokee County
Phone: 828-835-3200 (This
line stays very busy on school closings days. Use if you can't get us on Radio, Web, or CableTV)
BACKUP LINK TO ANOTHER SITE THAT PROVIDES SCHOOL CLOSINGS INFORMATION ... IN CASE THIS SITE SHOULD FAIL.
(It's nice to have a backup.)
WLOS - TV 13 (Asheville)
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