When a new boss comes into a position, they often feel like they need to make changes just to show their authority.

What would you do if the new superintendent at your children’s school made drastic changes to the snow day policy, which put the kids in harm’s way?

That is what happened to the mom in this story, so when an incident occurred, she sued the district and forced the new superintendent out.

Superintendent doesn’t like to delay or cancel school no matter how bad the conditions. This comes back to end her career.

Both my children attended elementary school in the northern midwest.

As you can imagine, it snowed.

A lot.

Even with all the snow removal infrastructure, when a particularly heavy storm came along, the town just couldn’t keep up with it, and the buses couldn’t run.

The school district had a solid plan.

For decades, the school district dealt with this by having five snow days built in to the calendar.

If they had more than five snow days, the kids would go an extra day(s) at the end of the year.

For years, this system worked, and no one ever complained, except the occasional child that had to attend a couple extra days in June.

Well, all good things must eventually come to an end.

I’m sure she’ll change it.

The old, mild mannered super retired. A new super took his place.

She was young, aggressive, and almost immediately reviled by everyone in the district.

Let’s call her Sue, because that’s what we ultimately did to her.

Sue didn’t know a lot about running a school district.

Sue came right out of corporate America.

I don’t know how she got it in her head that she wanted to run a school district, but she did.

She was so inexperienced that the school board had to give her a waiver to work in our district before she could even show up for work.

When the year started, Sue went on a power trip that made everyone’s heads spin.

This new super really sounds super awful.

She slashed hours for support staff.

Barred children from repeating a grade without her personal approval (wat).

“Cracked down” on teachers taking sick time, until the union pointed out that she was violating the CBA by doing that.

Backed off a little but vowed to “go after” any staff taking sick time.

Stopped the weekly trip to the fitness center by the special needs class.

She was like a cartoon villain.

Here’s the kicker…

But what’s important to this story– she ended the decades old snow day system.

Took the days right out of the calendar and said we wouldn’t be needing them, as she was “cracking down” on snow days.

Here’s how snow days work: the transportation department keeps an eye on the roads. If they are unsafe, or even if they are safe but the forecast is looking crazy for later, they tell the super they can’t safely run the buses.

The super then cancels school. It’s really supposed to be the transportation departments call.

Safety does not seem to be a priority to her.

Well, Sue decided that she is the sole arbiter of deciding cancellations, so even if transportation says it’s not safe to run the buses, she can say “tough.”

Which she did. Often.

As you can imagine, this led to a lot of awkward and even dangerous situations.

Those poor bus drivers!

Buses not being able to access rural roads.

Buses running an hour late.

Buses running their entire route completely empty because no sane parent would send their kids to school in a whiteout blizzard.

For two years we parents tolerated this dumb policy, but needless to say, we were frustrated.

The parents tried to take action.

We tried going through the proper channels.

Contacting the transportation department, writing to the school board. We even wrote a collective letter to Sue personally.

Who, if the rumor is true, spit on our letter and tossed it in the bin.

Though we did get a nice message on the school department website about how they are always thinking about the safety of the students, so that’s nice I guess.

It was bound to happen eventually.

Things finally boiled over the winter of that second year.

A bus went off the road.

Though my kids were not on it, it shook me up.

There were numerous complaints on the schools Facebook from scared and disgruntled parents.

Two years of being the only district open in the county during storms was getting on everyone’s nerves.

It’s always good to have a lawyer in the family.

My sister in law is a criminal defense attorney.

I am a disability advocate with a state agency, so while I’m not an expert on the law like my SIL, I tend to know my way around.

We met for dinner and decided that, if and when the inevitable tragedy happened, we would sue.

We met a couple more times to work on our game plan.

It’s too bad to have to wait until someone gets hurt.

You can’t sue a school district for making dumb snow day decisions, but if a kid gets hurt…

The day finally came in the late autumn of the third year of Sue.

We had a big storm roll through in the early morning hours.

Not cold enough to snow or freeze, thankfully, but extremely windy.

Most of the county lost power, including the schools. Thousands of outages. Power lines down, trees down, roads closed.

It was a mess.

Any reasonable school would close, but well, Sue wasn’t reasonable.

All the districts in the county closed.

All of course, except ours.

Sue was never one to turn down a chance at a power trip.

She ordered the schools to stay open.

It was a disaster.

Buses couldn’t access every road to pick up students.

Buses were late.

Never send kids to school in these situations.

Individual schools were putting out bulletins that attendence was parents choice, students unable to make it to school would receive a Principal’s Excused Absence, stay home if it’s the safer choice.

Bear in mind that all the schools were running on generators.

So, the high schoolers (who start an hour earlier) were sitting in the gymnasium bored.

There was literally no point in having school this day.

This sounds really scary, but it was just what they needed to happen.

Then, the inevitable happened– a tree fell and hit a bus.

And this time, my daughter was on it.

Thankfully, the driver did a good job of evacuating the children and there were only minor injuries.

But injuries nonetheless.

All because of Sue’s absurd no cancellation policy.

Some ambulances showed up. Four kids went to the hospital as a precaution. It made the news.

It was time.

I bet they were desperate to get parents to sign.

The district sent forms to all of the parents of injured children: they would cover all medical costs and provide counseling for the kids in the guidance office, AND a small cash settlement, in exchange for the parents signing a release of liability (“you can’t sue us”).

But my SIL and I had gotten to the parents first and advised them not to sign ANYTHING, as we were taking the district to big boy court.

Some of the parents did take the settlement offered, which is understandable since not everyone likes drama.

But some didn’t.

Some told the district right where to shove that settlement.

I was one of them.

Time to file a lawsuit.

SIL and I got together with a couple of the injured parents that were sick of the district’s nonsense.

We got our paperwork in a row and filed a suit.

We filed the suit so fast that our hands burst into flames.

(The essence of the suit was that the district had failed their duty of in loco parentis by making unsafe transportation decisions, directly causing the crash and injuries.)

My SIL also pulled some strings at the local newspaper and got our lawsuit a small spot on the front page.

Many parents were supportive of the lawsuit.

Parents came out of the woodwork to express their support.

They were frustrated after years of Sue’s authoritarianism.

It turned into a small media circus.

Well, the district’s lawyers got to work and quickly realized that this was going to be a mess.

The district finally wanted to talk.

A discovery process pulling up dirt, the parents of the injured children testifying, the general hatred of the district.

Not to mention it appeared that they would, indeed, lose.

They moved to quickly and quietly settle this case.

They basically sat down with us and said “name your price.”

They got the change they wanted.

And while I cannot discuss the details of the settlement, let’s just say that all injured parties were made whole.

Also, the district changed their cancellation policy immediately.

Now, if there was even a hint of snow or icky weather, they cancelled.

A welcome change of pace.

Sue lost her power.

As for Sue, she became very quiet.

She used to spend all day sending aggressive emails about her “policies.”

Now, hardly a peep.

All she did the rest of the year was fill the seat.

As summer approached at the end of the year, Sue announced her resignation.

Oh, you know she was basically fired.

She was leaving to “pursue other interests.”

We think she was asked to resign.

She was replaced by a superintendent who was much nicer.

He rolled back all of Sue’s power trippy policies.

I hate it when schools refuse to have snow days.

Let’s see what the people in the comments on Reddit say about it.

Sometimes having the school open is a good thing.

Hey, now that might be true.

This person had something similar happen.

I would never want that job.

This person thinks she should have been fired sooner.

Why did they hire her in the first place?

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.