No More Snow Days? - Joe Byrnes

Imagine it is a school day in January and you wake up to the sight of snow on the ground outside your bedroom window. You check the time and you see that you have slept in to ten o'clock. You rush out of your room, wondering why you slept in so late, and your mom tells you that there is no school. You jump with joy because you do not have to go to school and take that big test that you have. You do not have to do any school work. You get to relax and do whatever you want for the whole day.

It is always such a good feeling when you wake up to the light, fluffy snow on the ground, and you do not have to go to school. However, will this still be the case in the future?

Now that we are in quarantine and are learning new material remotely, is there really a need for snow days? If it snows and it is not safe to be on the roads and go to school, rather than taking a day off from school, students can just learn from their homes. It would be the same as it is now, during quarantine. The day of a bad snow storm, students would have their online classes that follow a delayed day one schedule. Teachers can still teach their students without having to go to school. Not only does this help cut down on extending the school year due to snow days, but it allows lessons to be taught even when severe weather does not allow for you to be at school.

There are a plethora of different factors that would effect having online learning instead of snow days. One of those factors is teachers being able to post the work they had in their lesson plan on time and on google classroom. If there is a snow storm and the school does not "cancel" school until five o'clock in the morning, it could be hard for teachers to post the work in time. To avoid this issue, rather than "cancelling" at the last minute, the school can do it the day before. To determine whether or not it would be online school or regular school, the school department can look at the weather and see if it is necessary. What if school is closed and students are learning online and the weather channel "lied"(barely any snow)? This does not affect the ability for students to learn because they can still learn from home. Also, there have been plenty of cases in the past where school has been closed and there was no snow on the ground. With distance learning instead of snow days, a school day will not be wasted.

Another factor is students' internet connection availability. Some students do not have access to an internet connection when they are at home. If distance learning is used, it would be extremely difficult for those students to learn. They would be forced to go to the library or somewhere with an internet connection. This is not ideal and not safe because if regular school was closed due to the weather, then the streets are not safe to be going throughout town. However, this internet connection issue could be resolved. During our current distance learning, the school has provided sufficient internet connection to those who need it. This has allowed for students district wide to learn remotely, regardless of their internet connection. This same idea can be applied to snow day distance learning. On the day of an unsafe snow storm, students would do distance learning and those without internet connection would use the provided connection by the school.

While there are so many factors that play a role in this, it is just an idea. I believe that this can be implemented into the schools in our own district, and possibly throughout our country. All it takes is one school to try the idea, and if it is successful, other schools might follow.