A snow day is not the end of the world, especially not on a day when only Ellie was going to be in school and we didn't have anything significant planned, anyway. The girls and I will stay home, bake something yummy, maybe go outside and shovel a little or build tiny snowmen. I plan to use my gravid state as an excuse not to pull children around on a sled.
One nice thing about (yet another) snow day is an excuse not to shower. Showering is dangerous! Children can leave the house, let other people into the house, join me in the shower, or cut off their hair. They are excellent at foiling "child-proofing" attempts. Fortunately I'm relatively clean already and I just had my hair done so none of me really needs washing.
The worst thing about a snow day is the lack of guaranteed nap. I know, all you working people are really feeling for me right about now. But by this point in my pregnancy, knowing that I get to lie down for 30 minutes in the afternoon really helps me muster the energy to get through the day. Everyone should be allowed to take a brief siesta, but for me it's nearly a necessity right now.
(When I was working throughout pregnancies and unable to nap in the afternoons, I'd come home from work, collapse on the couch, and be no good at all in the evenings. Once I even stopped a few blocks from home. I was too tired to drive the rest of the way without passing out on my steering wheel.)
I still think it's a little crazy to cancel school when a few inches of snow is forecast. Unless there's been half a foot of fresh snow since midnight and the roads are dangerously impassable - or unless you live in the deep South where there's inadequate snow removal equipment - I think a few inches of snow falling gradually throughout the night merits at most a few hours snow delay. I blame this trend on the litigious nature of our society. Why not?
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4 comments:
As baffled as I am about school districts around here, I must say that snow was the only reason I could attribute the number of districts to. Kirkwood did manage to stay open for one of the earlier snows this year, but they were the lone wolf and they are a smaller-in-road-count sized district from what I can tell. The real issue is that the main streets are fine, but the neighborhoods are not. Busses are not equipped to get in and out, because there is not ENOUGH snow to warrant an upgrade to that equipment.
I know Wyoming and Chicago never close, but I really think it is a safety issue, not litigious. Fairfax County (in Northern VA) made the wrong choice a few years back and has been gun shy since. They were not sued at all - strangely parents were understanding, but they had several children taken to hospitals after a couple of bus crashes.
I know that no nap sucks - I learned to enjoy them in July when I had nothing else going on! :)
The preschool I work at did NOT close for last week's snow, but many of the children chose not to come, so it was not an effective day. Today it's closed. DH reported the roads were quite bad. It took him 35 minutes to get to work, instead of his normal 15.
Hope you can make a decent snowman-the snow may be too fluffy.
Rob, I agree that there would be a safety issue with roads today! But I think today should be our first snow day (or snow delay) of the school year. In December they called off school when ice was forecast, but we had *nothing* on the streets in our district. Similarly, the couple inches of snow we had earlier this month were so minor that there wasn't even really enough to plow. Plus they fell fairly early in the evening and had partially blown away before bus times.
What's interesting to me is how frequently St. Louis County seems to call of school en masse. We're a fairly large county with many many school districts, and it seems to me that way out in Wildwood they frequently have heavier snows than we get here, a little closer in to town.
(I know that driving on snow isn't as safe as driving on dry roads, for buses or cars. But in places where there are harsher winters, drivers of all types of vehicles are more used to adjusting to the conditions. Whether or not the roads are plowed, if school was called off for 2 inches of snow in Michigan, the kids would never learn!)
Kathy, my husband's work is on a delayed start today, which I think it quite nice (and safer than negotiating rush hour on unploughed roads). He's downstairs in our basement office, dialed into an 8:00 conference call right now with plans to go in to the office as soon as it's over.
I'm not surprised that many students didn't come to preschool with last week's snow, in part because so many school districts were closed and I'm sure a lot of parents were already arranging childcare for other children. All these snow days are really tricky for working parents (especially the ones who work for businesses that don't get as many days off)!
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