Maybe it’s changes in school district administration? I remember having school called off when the pavement was decent, but the country roads were bad and the buses couldn’t run. There was a year or two where I remember them deciding to run the buses on pavement only (after multiple days had been missed). I guess the idea was that we need to have school and the country kids could get to the bus via tractor or 4WD?
I definitely remember plenty of snow days back around that time though. In fact, one year we did half a day on Saturday…