NFT: NYC Public Schools Cancel Snow Days

I'm willing to bet that a good chunk of BBI either never had a school day or had less than a handful of them since they were only used on the actual day of a big blizzard back in the seventies.

They cancel school if there is even a hint of flurries or snow.

I wonder how they can do that? I think it's a good idea, myself. It will help the kids appreciate evolution when they teach it.

a program like that in my town in MA two years ago because while snow days were awesome, no one still thought they were awesome when it came to mid June in 85 degrees being in school, so the thought was they'd have remote learning days instead of snow days throughout the winter and still get out early June as initially scheduled with no snow days tacked on.

The caveat was the number of kids submitting the remote learning work had to be over 65% for the program to succeed and be implemented permanently.

the results, less than 20% of the kids submitted the remote work, program scrapped.

Now with COVID maybe kids are more disciplined about doing online work, but they weren't in my town in that situation.

but they had fun that one year.

In comment 15253660 Semipro Lineman said:

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I'm willing to bet that a good chunk of BBI either never had a school day

yes, hardly a school day among us!

In comment 15253672 Del Shofner said:

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In comment 15253660 Semipro Lineman said: Quote: I'm willing to bet that a good chunk of BBI either never had a school day yes, hardly a school day among us!

I'm pretty sure that is self-evident.

Weak. Let kids be kids & have fun.

This was pretty much the case for NYC public schools this past year anyway. For my youngest, school ended at about 2:00 which gave her plenty of time to play in the snow.

Days were essentially just like remote learning when schools closed at the outset of the pandemic. Kids work is all posted online by 8:30AM and they can do and submit at their own pace by before EOD. My kids were generally done by lunch or shortly thereafter so they still got a half day off.

They're out June 9th instead of what probably would have been the 17th or 18th.

As long as no widespread power outages, snow days are a vestige of the preCovid era.

Some things should be sacred

No snow days would be devastating to him.

In comment 15253721 Ryan said:

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Days were essentially just like remote learning when schools closed at the outset of the pandemic. Kids work is all posted online by 8:30AM and they can do and submit at their own pace by before EOD. My kids were generally done by lunch or shortly thereafter so they still got a half day off. They're out June 9th instead of what probably would have been the 17th or 18th.

My kids have been fully remote since schools first closed last year. 3 different schools and all 3 receive live instruction every day. In fact, they get more live instruction than a lot of kids who are in person (a lot if kids sit in a classroom, bit their teacher is remote and they are on a laptop anyway.

For NYC it's no biggie they almost never have a snow day any way unless it's a blizzard. The district I work in kept them. I think for many districts they'll keep snow days until they reach the point where it will lengthen the school year then they'll start making them remote.

There'll be one day (at most) with snow bad enough to close schools. Nobody will show up to remote learn, and it will still count towards the required number of school days.

And there's less snow now than back then (this winter notwithstanding). It was pretty great when we got it, but I imagine kids can cope.

I can't think that parents would like this one. Virtual school is hell with many children.

In comment 15254303 KDavies said:

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I can't think that parents would like this one. Virtual school is hell with many children.

I was about to say that, I would rather have the snow day as a parent than anything associated with a remote day of learning. In addition, I believe schools will use this as a crutch to cancel more school days and just say do it remotely when there is even an inkling of snow in the forecast.

But know what sucks more? Having to supervise your kids outside while trying to work remotely yourself.

If you ask me let the kids and the parents have snow days again!

In comment 15253687 Enzo said:

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This was pretty much the case for NYC public schools this past year anyway. For my youngest, school ended at about 2:00 which gave her plenty of time to play in the snow.

This. Our district did a combo this year. The bad blizzard, we had a snow day, but a few of the other storms they just switched to virtual. I'm sure on these virtual school days art/music/PE will just be cancelled, so the school day will end early and kids will still have plenty of time to play.

Half the "snow" days in past years barely had snow. You might get an inch or two, but often they cancelled due to icy road conditions.

In comment 15254303 KDavies said:

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I can't think that parents would like this one. Virtual school is hell with many children.

Ha, I'm a parent and its a breeze, though only 1 school age child currently. My daughter does 90% of her virtual learning on her own (she's 100% virtual) and she's only in 2nd grade.

It was much worse on their snow days this year since both daughters just wanted to play outside all day which required me to be with them.

I'd also prefer virtual snow days to having to make up time over Spring break.

In comment 15254169 BlackLight said:

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There'll be one day (at most) with snow bad enough to close schools. Nobody will show up to remote learn, and it will still count towards the required number of school days.

It only counts if there is a minimum attendance threshold met.

Right now, ~70% of NYC students are remote. At that, not every student can say they have a DOE issued device. Even those that do, may not have access to internet. The 300K+ devices the city bought this year to meet the remote need were all iPads. This was not only far more costly than the alternative, but far less functional for full time remote learning.

Once students return to fully in person learning, presumably beginning in September, I imagine all those devices will have to be returned to schools, plus you have new entrants to the school system. There is no doubt there will be an accessibility gap to manage. Even after a year, this city is nowhere near prepared for fully remote education, even temporarily.