Yes, many of us may have jobs that can be performed adequately remotely. But our school-age children do not. So just “transitioning to remote work” on days when public schools are closed creates a real hardship, not to mention stripping the magic from snow days. Do better.
@bobkopp Some schools also do “non-traditional” (read: remote) instruction on school days, which also takes the magic out of snow days.
@bobkopp As an educator (and as a taxpayer), it is astonishing to me that the most significant monthly budget item in my household is for school tax… by a very large margin. Yet, when the weather is poor, the schools close on a dime. Here, they have been closed all week. More astonishing is that as a country we have no cohesive national policy on education during weather or public health emergencies. It’s just: figure it out on your own kids/parents. How can that be, given the taxes we pay to support these systems? Maybe it’s time to start withholding school taxes in protest? Moreover, there are so many other creative means and methods that we could use to teach our children at a distance. For example, we have three (or arguably five) terrestrial television broadcasters that pump out trash television or repetitive “news” all morning. Why not have a rule/law that on days when school needs to be closed that instead, these broadcasters must show educational lessons instead of reruns and Jerry Springer? Not a complete solution, but a step in the right direction, at least.
@velocykel We never had “snow days” in our schools. If it was half a metre of snowfall overnight, the municipality have snowploughs, and they have contracts with truckers and farmers that has a snowplough to clear most state, county and municipality roads in time for morning traffic. If it was below-20°C, we still had to go to school, but we were allowed to be inside during break time. We sometimes had to wade through snow to get to school, and we hated it of course, but we couldn’t just skip school unless we were sick.
