Let it snow ...

Hey blog readers! I actually have some time to update because I am stuck in my flat due to snow. It really did not snow all that much -- maybe three inches? But this is southeastern Virginia. People here do not take kindly to driving in the snow. Therefore, yesterday we had a snow day and today we're basically having an ice day.

One of my grandmothers had the unique role of being the one who would call off school at her school district in New Jersey. I've been thinking about what I would do if I were the one in that position. After all, my current plans are definitely to stay in the classroom, but there may be a day when I am called to administration as well. The best administrators are those who used to be in the classroom.

Obviously, the best reason to call off school is student safety. This is why we did not have school today -- some of the roads in the county are too icy for a school bus to get through. The one downside to this is that different parts of the county often see different amounts of snow. The students in my neighborhood probably could have gone to school without any problems. This is especially a problem in the county where I am from in Northern Virginia. There are more than twenty high schools in the county, so it totals to more than 100 schools total. Some parts of the county are your typical suburban concrete jungle, but other parts are still more off the beaten path. This can lead to administrators feeling that it might be okay to continue with school, but then finding that it was not such a good idea.

Example: my senior year of high school we had two potential snow days within two weeks. I say "potential" because one of them turned out to be a rain day. This day came first and the county was apprehensive about student safety so they called school off, like I would have, and it ended up only raining. The administrators were kicking themselves and the students were delighted. They decided that they weren't going to make the same mistake the following week and the snow and ice were terrible on the way to school. It actually took me an hour and a half to get there, and I was still one of the first students to arrive.

Which leads into a second issue: administrators only have a set number of snow days. Schools have to make them up after a certain point, so in an effort to keep breaks and avoid tacking days onto the end of the school year, administrators may decide not to give a snow day when it appears that it may not snow. This creates a situation like I just described. When I was a junior in high school we had so many snow days that they actually had to tack a half hour on to each school day after spring break in order to make up the time.

The bottom line: snow is awesome, but students have to stay safe and schools have to meet standards. Like many other issues in public school, snow days mean that schools have to seek a balance. Personally, I'm glad that I've had a little time to catch up on everything, but it will be great to see my students tomorrow.