“The cost of paying an EHS student to shovel your driveway: $30.

“The cost of a fender bender: $2,500.

“Walking into our Commons to be greeted by over 300 middle school students on a Monday morning: priceless,” according to an e-mail from Dr. James Wipke, head principal, to teachers, March 14.

Middle school students whose busses couldn’t make it up 109 to LaSalle Springs Middle School packed the Commons and greeted the few high school students who made it to school before 10 a.m..

Highway 109 shut down from Eureka to Highway 100, and Highway 44 backed up through Eureka, as accidents cluttered all of the roads and prevented anyone from getting anywhere on time, March 14.

“Earlier in the morning people weren’t prepared for the weather, so they were sliding off the roads all over the place,” Officer Mike Smith, school resource officer, said. “There was a lot of congestion from the accidents and traffic lights in several areas stopped working. If kids were coming from Wildwood, they had up to a two hour delay, and even kids in Eureka had hour-long delays.”

The traffic delay wasn’t necessarily a direct effect of the weather, but more due to drivers’ imperfect car-handling skills.

“I was so confused when I woke up and saw all the snow,” Maddy Melton (11) said. “I honestly thought it was a joke. I didn’t think that it would be so bad that our school would be affected, but after spending over an hour in the car when I only live 10 minutes away, I realized the whole day would be straight chaos.”

With all the of late arrivals, those students who did arrive at school were off to a rough start.

“At first I thought they were just having all the students wait in the Commons,” Ian Knight (12) said. “But then I realized it was all younger kids.”

Continuing onto the day, students were even more puzzled by the lack of productivity resulting from the 1,345 students who were reported absent for one of more hours, according to Mrs. Laura Bradford, attendance assistant.

“There were only three kids in my community service class, eight in AP Psych and in Family Relations only nine,” Kyria Viehman (12) said “We watched movies in Family Relations and in AP Psych we just did homework.”

While an estimated six inches of snow have fallen, according to weather.com, snow continues to descend as school dismisses and students trudge to their cars and buses.