Getting the Lawrence school district’s official word about school closings comes directly from Julie Boyle, one phone call at a time.

“It makes me nervous,” Boyle admitted Monday, after calling the home or cell phone — or both — for each and every student, teacher and employee in the district.

The message: No school Monday, because of inclement weather.

“I don’t like calling that many people at 6 o’clock in the morning,” she said, thankful that an automated system does the dialing and her recorded voice handles the talking. “It goes out to all students and all staff. We have over 11,000 students and over 1,600 staff. And it goes to multiple numbers. …

“It’s an emergency. We’re closing schools and they may need to make alternative child care plans.”

Don’t worry too much about Boyle’s nerves. She’s got plenty of experience.

Boyle spent 10 years as a deejay and reporter for KLWN-KLZR radio here in Lawrence, before leaving in 1998 to become the district’s director of communications. She had spun plenty of “adult contemporary” records and, later, CDs for thousands upon thousands of listeners, often live.

But now, when the phone rings in the early morning, students districtwide are hoping to hear only Boyle’s nervous voice on the other end, informing them that they won’t need to go to school.

Then they can go back to sleep.

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Boyle makes her schools-are-closed calls only after getting the go-ahead from her boss: Rick Doll, superintendent of schools.

And Doll, as I’ve noted before, doesn’t simply wait around for others to tell him how bad the roads are, nor how foul the weather’s going to get. He actually drives the streets for 45 minutes to an hour, to see just how treacherous conditions are.

And he’s not in a Land Rover or a Jeep Grand Cherokee or anything of the sort. Try a 2006 model, two-wheel-drive pickup loaded with four tubes of sand in the back and a single safety-minded administrator behind the wheel.

“It’s not very good in the snow,” Doll said. “And if I’m sliding around …”

Chances are good students can stay home to make snow angels, build snow forts or hit the extremes of snow-topped mountains for Shaun White Snowboarding on PlayStation3.

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The lessons and legacies of a civil rights leaders will be celebrated Wednesday at Pinckney School.

The school will conduct its sixth-annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration from 12:20 p.m. to 1:20 p.m. in the gym at the school, 810 W. Sixth. The public is invited.

The celebration will include fifth- and sixth-graders sharing lessons learned from King, and discussing service projects that have included donating 200 pounds of food to the Lawrence Community Shelter, adopting eight families for the winter holidays and collecting stuffed animals for children at Lawrence Memorial Hospital.

Fifth-graders also will perform a drum number, and there also will be a guest speaker and a guest soloist, said Cornelius Bell, the school’s parent involvement facilitator.

“It’s a great opportunity,” he said.

— The First Bell e-mailbox is always open: mfagan@ljworld.com.