Much has been said since the CSMD decided to close its schools, with some parents (see Peter McQueen's letter to the Editor) furious at their "panicked" reaction. Questions were raised about whether it was even necessary to close the schools and, if it was, why did it necessitate a frantic, midday evacuation, five entire days after the storm?

It's been a long winter, there's no doubt about it. 350 centimetres and counting have fallen. No one's seen this much snow since the early 70s. While writing this editorial, spring is officially here and yet snowflakes are still coming down – as if to mock us. Parking has been a nightmare and roofs have been burdened with excessive (and heavy) snow. One would be inclined to err on the side of caution and hesitant to criticize school administrators working to ensure our children's safety. Who would even dare imagine the outcry if the worst case scenario materialized and a school roof caved in, injuring or killing young children?

But before assuming that the course of action they decided to take was an obvious one, consider these questions: was the children's safety ever really compromised and did the risks of an evacuation outweigh any risks of a possible roof collapse?

The points that McQueen --and other parents like him-- are making are legitimate. Why was an evacuation required in the first place if regular upkeep and maintenance had indeed taken place? Why did the evacuation take place halfway through the day, necessitating a transfer of students to nearby facilities, which, by all accounts, were no better equipped to shelter the kids than the ones they were taken from?

In the case of NDG School, the kids were sent to nearby Le Manoir, a gym building whose roof had not even been shovelled off! How is taking kids from a school with an unshovelled roof and transferring them to another building with an unshovelled roof "a zero-risk" proposition? If the latter wasn't safer than the former, why the move at all? How about the children that were sent back home to a potentially unshovelled roof? Were they instantly safer or simply no longer the school board's responsibility?

Add to that the risk of a child getting hit by a car, getting abducted in the confusion, of snow and ice sliding off the roof onto someone's head, or children staying at home unsupervised, because parents had no time to leave work or make other arrangements, and one has to wonder whether there was a proper risk assessment made at all.