… at least by Seattle standards. I’m guessing in Erie, PA, not so much, but here in Seattle, who could argue? It’s just a shame to have canceled school yesterday based on the possibility of snow.
Now let’s see if the various districts have the common sense to just call off tomorrow in advance, and let everybody officially start Winter break early.
Goldy–
The “make-up” days to be tacked on at the end of the year are a joke.
The teachers & administrators only need something like 3 hours of classtime to call it a Full Day…or at least it used to be that way.
It’s all about getting those 180 days in….and the kids, oh yeah, we’re for the kids!
It should be argued that the school administrators did exactly the right thing on Wednesday. The forecast predicted 80%-90% likelihood of heavy snow. The schools made a decision based on the safety of the students and adults. Would you be happy if the snow had come on mid-morning and trapped kids and teachers in the blizzard, as has happened before? It is absolutely intolerable all the way round. Give the schools a bit of credit here, and be glad the worst did not come to pass.
What they did not expect was the Convergence Zone to hit right in the Seattle Area. Usually it hits North of the City. This is worse than 1990 and 1996 combined. I remember parts of both. Seattle School District did not just cancel for the next day, but the whole week prior to the break. It was the right thing to do, thinking back on it near 20 years later. High and Middle Schools get out around 2:15PM, first flakes fell as they were letting out, the bus fleet was late getting through their routes from those schools which meant they were over-extended as the Elementary Schools were dismissing.
Now Metro is cancelling some services, and it makes sense. The buses are no good when they are stuck in the snow. Re-routes have been done, but that is not enough. Still, I wonder if SOUNDER is running the Snow Train. They used to have an early afternoon Seattle Departure ready in the winter if it snowed. That was before the first afternoon trains to Tacoma started running at 3:30PM, instead of after 5PM.
The only thing worse than having kids home for a snow day with no snow is having kids at school when it snows hard.
You haven’t seen real snow until you can climb out of the upstairs windows on it. But, to those of you who call this little dusting “snow,” I’ll simply say there are worse things to be doing today than curling up in a rabbit den.
“Real snow” is a pretty relative statement.
We have enough plows to clear only the main surface streets maybe every 3 hours. We have no mass transit other than articulated buses that go no where in the snow. We have roads without any design thoughts towards snow. Add to that thousands of drivers with zero snow driving experience and that adds up to real snow to me.
And no, owning a Subaru does not make you a snow driving expert.