New York City Ends Snow Days

Here is one piece of news that, surely, will get divided reactions. The New York City public school system has officially done away with snow days.              

That’s right: no more snow days anymore for the kids.              

Now, I know that some people will view this as progress. After all, we are beating the elements, are we not? Our education system will go on, almost as a normal day, even if we get those rare snow storms of two feet or more.              

To me, though, this is a loss. One of the magical things that I remember experiencing as a kid are those wonderful days when school would be cancelled on account of snow. It did not happen often, but it was such a joy when it did. I can still recall watching the local news channels, and waiting and waiting down the list in hopes of finding out that our school district (West Milford, New Jersey – way down in the alphabet) would be closed. Again, when it was, it seems that everyone was happy.              

Yet, there are lessons in those days off, as well. Life does not necessarily go on when something really big happens. Also, it seems to me to have given some respect to the awesome power of Mother Nature. And yes, another lesson was one about appreciating the magic of small victories, like having an unexpected day off from school.              

It feels particularly bureaucratic and humorless, frankly, to take these snow days away. Surely, somebody saw that it was possible to still have these school days via remote learning and decided that, yes, we can still have regularly scheduled school days, even right in the thick of an enormous, crippling snowstorm or other very severe weather event. This is one of those negative things that the Coronavirus pandemic will have been responsible for altering.              

Again, I do not expect most people to necessarily agree with me. And I know one of the arguments that I made – that being simply that snow days are fun – likely does not hold water with ultra-serious people. However, there is something to be said with allowing kids to be kids, and not little adults. Give them a break from adult responsibilities every now and then, and stop trying to make them miniature adults. Let them experience the thrill of a snow day, and knowing that you will not have school on a day when you might normally have one.  Kids have the rest of their lives to deal with adult responsibilities and deal with the stress that goes with it. How about giving them a little bit of a break when the opportunity presents itself?  Not in New York city, apparently. I am afraid that it likely will spread to school systems across the nation, as well.

Presumably, nobody is going to be able to go anywhere when there is a snowstorm massive enough to largely shut down the city. That means that everyone is pretty much stuck inside together. Or to put it another way, it is one of the relatively rare instances when a family can be together. But with school now making requirements of kids to spend the full school day remote learning, and most likely with many jobs set to require the adults to also work remotely from home, it spoils the fun and romance of a snow day. On top of having to deal with all of that, by the time you are done, you have to go down and deal with shoveling the snow from the driveway and the car, and with limited daylight left after the fact.

Seriously, this is not an improvement. Lighten up, people.