School Closings First Of The Season.

Students are seeing their first snow day today, with most Oneida and Herkimer County school districts closing.

Only the most northern districts in Oneida County - Camden and Adirondack - remained open with a two hour delay. Camden was also continuing with its in-school Clinics H1N1 vaccine this week.

The winter is starting out quite a bit differently than last year, by mid December when most schools had already closed for three days.

"Each winter is different," said Oneida-Herkimer-Madison BOCES Superintendent Howard Mettelman. "But we typically have a snow day before Thanksgiving."

This year, the area broke the 1902 record of most days between snow fall.

Wednesday morning, the area saw a couple of inches of snow, but the warning of sleet and ice expected Thurs hit about 11 am also played a factor in the school closings.

"Our Priority Is to make sure the kids are safe," Mettelman said.

Schools in the Oneida-Herkimer-Madison BOCES have scheduled five snow days for the school year. If they are not used up, most districts have scheduled additional days off in the spring. If the Wintry weather hits hard in the coming months and schools have to use more than their allotted days, it typically means students will lose out on some vacation days during the February or spring breaks.

Wednesday was also the first day the Utica City School District rolled out its automatic dialer system In which calls were made to the homes of all of the more than 9.000 students in the district notifying parents of the school closings. The district purchased the system during the summer and had tested it in the fall.