The pandemic has forced schools to quickly get comfortable with online learning, and in the pivot to remote education, it was widely assumed that ice and snow would no longer force the cancellation of classes.
“Sorry, kids. Snow days are probably over,” The New York Times recently declared.
For many Vermont districts, that’s indeed the case. But more than a few traditionalists are holding on, and letting kids close their books — and laptops — when blizzards sweep through.
“Our initial reaction was all right, well, we don’t need to worry about snow days anymore,” said Brooke Olsen-Farrell, superintendent of the Slate Valley Unified Union School District. “But as we dug into that and spoke more about it, it became pretty clear that to have a remote learning day on a snow day would also be pretty challenging.”
The school district, which serves about 1,300 students in western Rutland County, is offering in-person programs for most students this year. Elementary and middle school kids are physically at school five days a week. Only high school students are attending school on a hybrid schedule.
Transitioning to remote learning for snow would require knowing ahead of time whether to send kids home with their Chromebooks, she said. And it would also mean the district would need to figure out how to make and deliver meals in a snowstorm.
Besides, Olsen-Farrell said, snow days are a quintessential part of a Vermont childhood. In a time of so much stress and turmoil, the superintendent said, she welcomed the chance to offer people a sliver of normalcy.
“There isn’t one thing that we do that hasn’t changed. And I think this is one constant, I guess, that we can give families and students and staff,” she said.
Ashleigh Ricciarelli, whose three children attend Barre City Elementary School, would agree. She is already keeping her kids at home this year by way of the district’s all-remote option. Still, she wishes her kids could get a day off when the weather gets bad. Online learning has been a slog — for both her and her children — and she just wants them to have a break.
“I want them to be able to be kids. And that’s a part of being a kid — is a snow day. I mean, at least in this part of the country,” she said.
In the Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union, which serves the Upper Valley towns of Weathersfield, Windsor, West Windsor and Hartland, Superintendent David Baker said his schools plan to replace snow days with remote learning.
The kids in his towns actually have good connectivity, he said, and snow days, which tend to pile up in Vermont, can tack on quite a few days to the end of the school year.
And since learning can now continue online, Baker said, he’ll be less likely to wait until the last minute before making the call to keep everyone at home. That will give families more time to make arrangements, including finding child care.
“It won’t be that surprise call at 6 in the morning or 5 in the morning,” he said.
Many school districts will split the difference. If they know far enough ahead that the weather will definitely require everyone to stay home the next day, school leaders will call a remote day, tell teachers to plan accordingly, and send students home with their laptops. But if they make the call in the wee hours of the morning, they’ll just give everyone the day off.
That’s the case in the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union, where Jed Pauls, a parent and elementary school counselor in the district, runs a playful Facebook page that blends memes and National Weather Service charts to predict the next snow day.
Pauls can still remember the name of the school districts — in alphabetical order — that the radio would list off when snow days were called during his childhood in Connecticut. And as a self-described snow day obsessive, he is unabashed in his support of canceling school outright when the weather turns.
Like many parents, Pauls says actual snow days bring fun and relief into the lives of children during the bleakest part of the year. But teachers, he said, also appreciate the break.
“Rather than just sort of having the pure joy of like, maybe getting a day off, getting a little bit of a break, being able to sleep in, it’s ‘Quick, get all your plans together, and make sure that they’re posted on time, so that everything can start happening at 8 o’clock in the morning,’” he said.
