Snow days hold a special place in everyone’s heart. Maybe you
superstitiously flushed an ice cube down the toilet or wore
your pajamas inside out when the weather report looked
promising. If you were lucky, you got to build snowmen or sled
down hills in the neighborhood on those special school-free days.
Or maybe for you, snow days simply were a much-needed break: a
day to study, a day just for you. Snow days are often fondly
remembered as an oasis in the middle of the grueling school year.
Online school has the polar opposite reputation. For most of us,
distance learning meant isolation, tanked grades, and blue light
burning our eyes out of our heads. One thing’s for certain though—
only a crazy person would trade a snow day for Zoom. Or so I
thought.
Imagine then, my shock, when I found out that New York City
was getting rid of snow days for good and replacing them with a
Google Meet. I was most upset not because the children in New
York City would no longer get to experience the magic of snow
days, or even because online school has been proven to be
incomparable to in-person schooling in terms of engagement and
functionality, but because this could very well be the start of a
trend. Schools have been concerned with the ever-dropping test
scores in a post-Covid world, and teachers are scrambling to make
up for lost time after an almost year-long educational gap.
In a recent interview with WNYW (What New Yorkers
Watch), New York City’s Department of Education chancellor
David C. Banks explained, “With the new technology that we have
—that’s one of the good things that came out of Covid—if a snow
day comes around, we want to make sure our kids continue to
learn.” There he claimed that the need for uninterrupted education
can be met through technology on days with inclement weather.
Banks doesn’t seem to understand the cultural weight snow days
hold, nor the multitude of advantages they include. He also grossly
overestimates online learning.
I believe that, no matter how advanced online school gets, it can
never replace the real thing. For a lot of kids, especially high
schoolers, there just isn’t enough motivation to wake up and make
the effort to log onto a Chromebook. Banks, who likely never
attended online school for months on end, cannot possibly
understand the aversion many kids have to it. I fear that since few
adults, apart from maybe teachers, are able to comprehend how
repetitive and dull online school is, they will follow Banks’s lead to
cancel snow days, a decision that no student would be happy with.
However, I also maintain hope that we won’t lose our precious
snow days. Everywhere I look, I see outrage at the loss of snow days
in the city. Parents and students alike are angered at the cancellation,
and you’d be hard-pressed to find a single word of praise for the decision.
When asked how NYC students felt about the cancellation of snow days,
Asa Posmentier-Row, a middle- school student in New York, explained,
“…The attitude [about snow days being canceled] is generally annoyed,
as snow days are valued activity and counted on for enjoyment during
the winter.” He, and many other students, understandably aren’t thrilled
about this new development. However, he also highlighted the important
fact that there isn’t much snow in New York City each year, which may have
contributed to the decision to revoke snow days.
So, should we be concerned for the safety of our treasured snow days?
I don’t think so. At least, not yet. Ithaca usually gets a lot of snow, and
generally, a fair amount of snow days. That would mean a lot of online
school, in which even Banks might see the harm. Until the snow has
slowed down or online school has improved, IHS should be able to keep its snow days.