Volume 3, No. 4. February 28, 2003
Snow
jobs
Even
in the off-season, parks are worrying about the weather.
That’s because this off-season in the United States, the weather has been
extraordinarily snowy, icy and cold. As winter storm after winter storm roars
across the continent at a pace of twice a week, many schools that have had to
close for “snow days” are looking to extend their classroom calendars
into the summer months to make up the time.
That has amusement parks in the Midwest and Mid-South considering contingency
plans for staffing their operations. “If they extend a week, it will affect
us marginally,” said Vic Nolting, President of Coney Island in Cincinnati,
Ohio. “If it gives way into June, that will be difficult for us.”
For his park, which employs about 1,000 for the season, the problem is the number
of school districts and their prevailing indecision. Coney Island hires from
10 school districts and four colleges, and each district decides individually
how it intends to make up its snow days. Options range from adding minutes to
school days, filling in teacher work days, using part of spring break or adding
days onto the end of the year.
“If a third do nothing, and a third extend one week, and a third extend
two weeks, we’ll be fine,” Nolting said. If all extend one to two
weeks, he figures half of his employees would be impacted. For now, though,
Nolting cannot even gauge any scenarios because the school districts are still
debating their courses of action. Parents are even pushing for decisions, preferring
options that will not extend the school year, Nolting said.
School districts typically build snow days into their academic calendars. However,
schools in Kentucky, for instance, used up those excess days before the end
of January, and some of that state’s districts are 12 days in the hole.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district in Charlotte, North Carolina, decided
to use the President’s Day Holiday as a make-up day, but an ice storm canceled
school that day, too. “For us Southerners, we’ve had a pretty hard
winter,” said Jodie Roberts-Smith, public relations manager at Paramount’s
Carowinds in Charlotte.
She said Carowinds' staff have begun discussing contingencies in case school
years extend, but the situation there is further complicated by the fact that
Carowinds straddles the North Carolina/South Carolina state line; the park not
only draws its employees from multiple school districts, it draws from two different
states with markedly different school calendars. “It would touch us more
if North Carolina has to go later because they already end closer to our full-time
operating season,” Roberts-Smith said. That full-time season begins with
Memorial Day.
Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana, begins its daily operations May 14, before
the schools end their years. Traditionally, those May days challenge staffing
needs, said Will Koch, president of Holiday World & Splashin Safari, which
hires 1,050 seasonal employees. “We always have a hard time staffing those
days in May, and if we’ve got five more of those hard days (because of
school extensions) I’m confident we’ll get through it, but it does
put stress on the staff,” he said.
The schools in Holiday World’s recruiting area were, as of Thursday, only
a couple days in debt. “It’s a small concern for us at this point,”
Koch said. But he also pointed out that yet another storm, the second this week,
was forecast for last evening. “The bad thing is the storms keep coming
through every four days, and we’re not out of February yet.”
THE LOOP is written and produced by Eric Minton, Minton Enterprises, LLC. To see more examples of Eric Minton's work and Minton Enterprises services, visit www.ericminton.com.
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