1st November 2023
Dear Parents/Carers
Storm Ciaran
You will be aware that Strom Ciaran is predicted to hit West Sussex overnight and through tomorrow. Currently, the Met Office has put an Amber warning in place for high winds and a yellow warning for heavy rain, which may lead to flooding. Whilst the weather warning remains at Amber, we plan to open school tomorrow.
However, we may need to close at short notice. This would be because:
- The Met Office upgrades the weather warning to red.
- We have insufficient staffing to run school safely. As this could be due to travel difficulties, we are unlikely to have much notice of this.
Our school community travel in from a wide area so please do assess your own local situation and only travel in if it is safe. We understand that West Sussex Transport will also be assessing the situation locally and they will contact you directly to inform you should there be any disruption to their service.
Please do check your emails, MCAS or the website so that you will know if this situation changes. We will also inform West Sussex and local radio stations should we need to close.
Sickness absence
We have had a high level of staff sickness absence this week, which has meant we have had to partially close some classes. Thank you to those of you who have been impacted by this so far. Your support and help always makes these difficult situations so much easier. To those of you who have not yet been impacted please be aware that this could happen and make necessary contingency plans. We only close classes / partially close them if it is unsafe to open them and this can happen at very short notice.
Kindest regards
Catriona Goldsmith