Making the call on snow days

AP ^ | Monday, February 9, 2004

[presidio9]

Eight years ago, in the middle of the night, John Yagielski watched his car burn outside his home and decided then and there to end his 30-year career in education.

No one was ever arrested, but police believe the fire was set because school superintendent Yagielski had extended the school day by 40 minutes for a few weeks to make up for a snow day.

[presidio9]

Teachers traveling a far distance in nasty weather are factored in, too

Same problem. Teachers have lawyers too.

[Junior]

The only people responsible for making the determiniation that the snow is too deep for Junior are Mom and Dad. Period.

Mom and Dad are dead, and I'm old enough to make the decision for myself...

;^)>

[presidio9]

Settle down Junior. You'll do what your school superintendent thinks is best for you, and that's final.

[ShadowDancer]

But, not every school is a public school. The rule of thumb used by the principal where my kids go to school is this: Nasty weather is being called for. He waits until the last possible minute to cancel and generally goes on whether the teacher who lives farthest away (she lives an hour drive in good conditions and drives a 4 X 4 and will drive through all sorts of garbage) feels she can make it in safely. As a rule, school is almost never cancelled because of weather. He did mess up bad on it once this year and I had my kids all day because of it and I wanted to kill him for it but that is a rare exception and a whole 'nother therapy session.

[NY.SS-Bar9]

Call as many snow days as you want. As long as they are UNPAID days for all school administrators.

[Grammy]

You are right about the milk and bread thing. I sometimes think Kroger must have a kickback thing going with the weathermen. If they say the "s" word, then grocers make out like bandits.

[ryanjb2]

"Yes, but do you have any sand, salt, deicers, snow tires, chains, ice scrapers, and plows? They don't down here. The city and county don't either. Not worth the money. "

Yeah, I guess I didn't think of that, my bad...

[Martin Tell]

Do what they do here in Nashville .. .

Like what happened last week when they closed Metro schools when there was no snow at all? Or the week before when they closed at 10:30 am when they saw a few flakes?

My wife and I are fortunate in that our jobs allow is to adjust but this can be a real hardship for parents with regular jobs.

I think Metro is much too fast to close. Maybe if Pedro Garcia (superintendent of Metro Nashville schools) had seen some snow in his youth he would not be so fast to panic and close down the schools.

[EastIdaho]

Kids these days are babied to much. When I was a kid we walked the 2 miles to school, it wasnt uphill both ways, just up hill round trip. We wouldnt wear our shoes because they would get wet in the snow and get ruined. We would wrap barbed wire around our bare feet to give us traction. We didn’t have hand-held calculators. We had to do addition on our fingers. To subtract, we had to have some fingers amputated. We didn’t have fancy high numbers. We had “nothing,” “one,” “twain” and “multitudes. We didn’t have water. We had to smash together our own hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Kids today think the world revolves around them. In my day, the sun revolved around the world, and the world was perched on the back of a giant tortoise. Back in my day, “60 Minutes” wasn’t just a bunch of gray-haired liberal 80-year-old guys. It was a bunch of gray-haired liberal 60-year-old guys. We didn’t have Strom Thurmond. Oh, wait. Yes we did ...

[Nataku X]

In the defense of Southerners, the counties are very poor equipped to deal with snow. In the North it takes 30 minutes max for the snowplows to arrive & for the roads to clear. A county in Tennessee might have only two snowplows total. You'd be waiting for hours for the snowplow to come (if at all). All the electricity is above ground, and there are a lot more trees so snow-laden branches are very likely to knock out your power for days.

And besides the real danger isn't from snow, it's from ice... it's very difficult to explain to the Northerners how incredible these ice storms are.

That being said, I was born in the South, but I live in the North and I do NOT relish carrying a snow SHOVEL in my car nor do I relish having to get up 60 minutes early just in case I have to shovel the snow.

Who's the funny one... the Southerner for shutting down for a few inches of snow... or the Northerner who, well, lives in the North? I say the latter.

[Nataku X]

Correction: grew up in the South, not lucky enough to have been born there..

[Final Authority]

In our school district they don't have snow days they have delayed opening. Apparently a delay of two hours does not cause a day to be made up so we have day after day of delayed openings. Before the concept of delayed opening the district had to hold school to the last few days of June. There is great reluctance to hold school to make up days in a vacation period because the relatively affluent residents have plans to either ski or go to Florida over break periods. There would be no problem if school was held in regular hours. The bus arrives at 6:25 and school is out by 2:15. This is to accommodate the sports and music programs after school. If school started at 9:00 and was out at 4:00 there would be fewer snow days and more awake students. The kids need more sleep.