WTF? It hasn't even started snowing and you cancel school?

Here in the DC metro area we are under a winter storm warning/winter weather advisory, with a forecast of 3 to 4 (or maybe about 5 i farther out) inches of snow and maybe a little mix of ice but it's not starting till midmoring. Plus its supposed to get above freezing this afternoon. But I just heard that one school system has already closed.
Seiously this area is the BIGGEST SNOW WIMPS EVER!:wtf: :crazy:

just the forecast of snow is enough to start people canceling school

and all the schools shut down. The schools in my county are all closed today. I don't mind. It makes for good rush hour traffic.

When I first moved to Virginia, after living in Michigan and Utah, I was shocked when the local school system canceled classes on threat of snow. Of course, the snow did not materialize and the the day was sunny and mid-40s but, thankfully, they had canceled school! When I asked WTF is up with this "pre-emptive canceling" I was told that, several years before, a local school bus slipped off a slightly snowy road, and rolled onto it's side. All aboard were fine (just minor bumps and bruises) but the lawyers appeared with gusto. Now the school board just cancels classes in advance.

mikey_the_rat

I wondered what had happened in the half hour since I'd come in from my car. Apparently nothing.

A month ago there was a forecast of a major snow storm starting around news. It was forecast to be EXTREMELY heavy right at the start. Schools were cancelled all over the state, and threads were started here complaining about it.

You know what? It happened EXACTLY as forecasters predicted. If schools had been in session, they would have been dismissed early. Buses can't be coordinated instantly, so that meant that students would have been riding home 1) when the storm was at its worst, and 2) when all of the "grown-ups" would also be trying to head home. It would have been a very dangerous situation for the kids, and for what? To prove that we are "macho"? To show that we know best?

This society can't slow down for one second. Why not play it safe? I'm a teacher in a public school so my school year will be longer thanks to the snow day. So what? It's the right thing to do.

Rant off.

and unlike most other places, winter forcasts here are almost never right. We get snow when it wasn't predicted and when it is..its rarely as severe as called for. I can't tell you how many times schools have been cancelled and then zip shows up.
Hell, there are MORE accidents in the rain here. Should school be called for a rainy day?

Do you have statistics to back that up? What about accidents as a percentage of drivers on the road?

I'm a parent, and a teacher, and the safety of my child and my students is of paramount importance to me. Students are not missing any instructional time during the snow day - it's made up at the end of the year. What is the big deal with making sure that they're not going home on a packed bus with no seat belts with 4 inches of snow on the ground?

The weather forecasters are notoriously horrible here. That is in good part because from the I-95 corrider and east, the weather systems will often pull in warmer air off the Atlantic, thus changing snow to either sleet or rain.

As far as the drivers go, they just don't know how to drive in the snow. After living in CT for 20 years, I know what real snow is like.

OTOH, my wife is in the school system her and they do take seriously the matter of cancelling school. It's a difficult situation for the schools. The decisions typically need to be made by 4am based on sketchy weather reports. Google "Norm Lewis" for our typical weatherman.

Army brat so I was in quite a few school systems until I hit high school.

I remember that day vividly and it was awful! As I mentioned below, the logistics of arranging transportation home is hellish. I wonder if there are any school systems that don't stagger start times so as to maintain fewer buses. I'm on the side of prudence as well, but I can see how it creates inconveniences parents need to deal with. Probably a great learning opportunity for both parent and kids on how to deal with situations like these.

Once they get through the elementary schools, then the middle schools, then the high schools, it can take up to two hours to get everyone out of school and off the road. Plus, I work at a magnet school and some of the suburban kids have an hour bus ride on a GOOD day.

They close schools if there is an even a *possibility* of snow, it seems.

it's the threat of lawsuits. When I was a kid, if you slipped and fell on the ice or in the snow, it was an accident. Nowadays parents want to sue the school, the bus company, the bus driver, etc, etc.

kids home early if that becomes necessary. Many areas stagger elementary, middle and high schools so the same buses can be re-used every day. If you need to get every kid home at the same time it's a nightmare. Not to mention what to do with the kids who are picked up by their parents who are unreachable at the moment for some reason or another.

We are only supposed to get a trace to an inch of snow, before turning over to rain this afternoon. That what Norm Lewis said last night!

it was Fauquier county in Virginia.

The county I lived in stretched into a portion of foothills that would often get snow when the rest of the county was unaffected. Because of the county system and the issue with buses to those areas, if they got snow the rest of us got the day off too. Sucks for parents, sweet for kids!

Edit to add: This was when I was in high school so I didn't care about not getting to play in snow.

and my reaction was the same - :wtf: Remember a few years ago when we were supposed to get a bad storm and Metro announced the day before that it would be halting service, so the federal gov and the DC gov announced they were closed the next day. That meant my office, and many others closed as well and so did all the area school systems. So the storm came, but was not as bad as forecast and everyone had egg on their faces? Talk about yelling "wolf".

i did not have a snow day for the last six years of my K12 education and there were days we really should not have gone in. like the day my bus slid down a large hill because it was completely iced over.

here (northern colorado, i still live in the same town), they don't even start thinking about canceling school until about 4 a.m. and their decision is based on how much snow has fallen and what the day's forecast is.

my district didn't, and still doesn't, do late starts if the weather is bad and they depend on forecasts in an area that is extremely hard to forecast. if the forecast says we'll get six or eight inches, it's more likely we'll have temps in the 40s. we got four feet once when they said the storm would miss us. i'm not knocking meteorologists, i know it's gotta be a tough job here.

like finnfann pointed out, it's not an easy thing to get the kids home once school started and that also has to be taken into account.

i guess my point is that it is a tough situation to balance.

i need more coffee

:eyes: At 8 PM, the closings that crawled along the bottom of the TV screen showed that three major school districts in this area had already decided to close schools just because of the threat of snow/ice. We had some precipitation, but it wasn't a major threat and is just rain now. The roads were just fine when I left for work.

Just for the record, the college I work for is NOT closed. :P

The roads out here in Olney were slicker than pig snot.
The problem is the schools are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
If they don't close and the roads get really bad later in the day it takes forever for the buses to get kids home. I remember times when they were an hour or more late and the parents screamed bloody murder.
If they do close and the storm skirts the area they catch hell for being afraid of a little weather.

Its also hard if it turns out to be a false alarm and the parents have to go to work and also make arrangements for day care for their kids.
I posted out of a certain frustration that it seems in the last two years in particular there have been a lot of quick closures and when I get out on the road its fine.
I did just look outside and it is snowing pretty hard still, so maybe it would have been justified in this case. But its definitely a hard call.
And I am liking my 4 mile commute immensely at this point

a day today (scheduled that way due to High School Semester Final Exams).

About three inches here. Thanks Norm! :grr:

The plows and salt trucks won't get to my street until the secondary arteries are cleared and we have two kids in Kindergarten on the block.

School was closed on the possibility of the chance of snow the next day . . .

ahhh memories.

We are not snow wimps; the roads get completely paralyzed because locals don't get enough practice driving in it.

Our last little snowstorm in early December during the morning rush destroyed traffic everywhere.

I don't look forward to the freezing rain on top of this snow. If it freezes hard, tomorrow will be the problem.

3-4 inches of snow? They might let school out early or start 2 hours late, when I was a kid I didn't even turn on the radio to check unless it was an all-out blizzard...but snow is on the ground for like 4 months out of the year, so the folks there are used to it, no worries. The cold wind chills is what is dangerous in that part of the country, very dangerous.

Carly

our kids would never pass elementary school. There are not enough make up days in the year. :P