Adults tend to have fond memories of “Snow Days.” Those magical breaks due to bad weather that happen throughout those places that get snow.
Years ago Snow Days were just part of doing business. In Indiana a school district would apply for a waiver and not have up make them up, unless you took off weeks at a time. My first few years we had “Make Up Days” Martin Luther King’s Birthday and President’s Day we’re on the calendar as days we would go to school if we needed. One year, it happened. The community got upset, the media was called and we ended up adding days to the end of the year. Which was good since the last possible day for a blizzard is well into March. Having taught for as many years as I have I know if we can make it past the High School Boys Basketball Finals we are safe.
Make up days are still around and part of the calendar but waivers died when a new Superintendent of Public Instruction came into office and decided besides that public money should go to vouchers and charters, that test scores should be used to punish schools and teachers, that also all days need to be made up- no matter what. The school year is 180 days, period. Waivers were a thing of the past. We started dealing with delays instead… did it help improve education? Not really. It did give me two hours to shovel my driveway. Once we finally got used to the “new normal” we had a pandemic.
The race to virtual schooling and its impact has been debated and discussed so I won’t even go into that here. What it did really, was put a nail in the coffin of the “Snow Day.” Even though devices may not normally go home, if there is a chance of bad weather, suddenly it’s OK. There’s a scramble to make sure the system works and Zoom links working. Virtual classes replaced sleeping in, playing in the snow, just being a kid. The gift of an unscheduled reprieve from the daily grind is no longer. If anything it has become worse than a regular day. Trying to figure out device/connectivity issues through a screen. Trying to mute parents talking loudly about things they should talk about around small children, but now the entire class can hear. You see the inequities firsthand and wish the people who had the power to change things would understand.
I guess just wish the kids could have played today, but with the high stakes tests on the horizon what else can schools do?
