Today is the best of snow days. We called it last night around 7 p.m., so no one had to get up extra-early to make phone calls or send emails. And the weather cooperated. By dawn there were six inches of new snow on the ground, and the changeover to ice, rattling my windows, was just beginning. But not all snow days are equal.
A friend used to work as a local reporter. Interviewing a school superintendent, he asked, innocently, “What’s the hardest part of your job?” The immediate answer: “Snow days.”
Snow days remind me of George Carlin’s question: “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”
If we close school, we’re wrong because it just wasn’t that bad.
If we don’t close school, we’re wrong because it was clearly unsafe to travel.
How do we decide? The local superintendent consults the town road crew, who are often actually awake at 4:30 in the morning, plowing, sanding, and salting. And then, based on their recommendation, he makes a decision.
Private schools, of which we are one, follow this decision because some of our students, too, travel to school on buses provided by the district. If the buses are running, we’re open. If not, we’re closed. It’s a pretty simple protocol, and it works well most of the time. But New England weather is unpredictable and so we usually end up looking like idiots or maniacs at least once a winter.
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