In wake of storm HISD criticized for late weather call

When the nation's 7th largest school district finally made its heavy weather call, some of its buses had already hit the road, loaded with kids.

Beneath I-45 at Griggs Road a yellow hound stalled in flood water with students aboard.

With a jacked up Chevy, the guys at nearby Don Rucker’s Tire and Wheel towed the bus to safety.

"I heard someone yelling from the other side not to get out of the bus, kids on the bus. Darn it, we need to do something, so we got off our Facebook feed and got in our truck and went around the freeway and basically drug them out," said  rescuer Frank Eldritch.

It was a call too close for comfort.

And while there were no reported injuries district wide, parents were perturbed Houston ISD pulled the trigger on a two hour delay of the school day long well after other area districts had issued the same call.

"I think HISD should have called a little bit earlier, like two hours earlier to prepare our kids' route to school," said Ashley Francis with children at both Milne and Valley West Elementary Schools. 

HISD spokesman Jason Spencer the sheer size of the District adds complexity to the decision.

"Certain parts of town schools were inaccessible this morning. Other parts of town people were reporting very little rain," said Spencer.

While hindsight in the wake of an unpredictable storm is easy, Spencer contends HISD leaders made the timeliest decision they could based on the information available.

"At the end of the day the decision is based on safety. We want to make sure no one is put in harm's way unnecessarily. This decision we made late in the morning was with that as the underlying motive," added Spencer.