If you need to know if the El Dorado Springs R-II School will be closed because of bad weather, look on KOLR 10 TV or go to facebook, according to Superintendent Mark Koca.

On Tuesday, the Sun learned while talking to Supt. Mark Koca that the R-II School was closed because of bad weather and mentioned that it was not listed on KY3 TV that morning.

“KY3 has changed their reporting process and I’m having a little feud with them right now. The reason I’m having a feud is because they are trying to make money off of our school closings. I’m a little irritated with them. So, right now I’m not reporting to KY3 and their affiliates.”

“What they want to do is…We have this thing called the School Closing Network. We log on and we can put when we are closed. Been doing that for 15 years probably. KY3 decided they wanted to have their own so I would have to go to yet another web site, log in with another password and do it for them specifically because they are advertising their cellular application for that to be ‘push notifications.’”

“So when you sign up for your school, it will push that notification out. You don’t have to get it passively. It will come to you directly along with a whole phone full of ads.”

“I think it is inappropriate of them to make money off of the fact that I’m closing school today. That I’m going to be actually responsible for pushing the ads out to my patrons’ phones.”

Q. Then who reports it for you?

“Our two biggest things for our patrons right now are facebook and our school messenger service. Channel 10 is still part of that school closing network so it’s reported there.”

“I put the word out yesterday on facebook and on my school messenger that we are not reporting to Channel 3 at this time. I don’t think it has caused any big issues. I just kinda had a philosophical opposition to what they are doing. They tried to make it sound like was a big service they were offering to us.”

‘Right now, Channel 10 will always have the correct information.”

Q. Can people call the school and get the information?

“We don’t even have that line available anymore.”

“Right now, the best notification we have is facebook. Yesterday, I put the message out and within 10 minutes, it had been shared 119 times. That’s probably the best and fastest way I can put it out now. It is not without its problems because last Friday somebody had picked up a message from a year ago and reposted it and made it look like we were going to be out of school on Friday. You have to be careful when you look at the dates.”