No More Snow Days? Remote Work Has Many Schools Rethinking Winter Days Off

A snowstorm in New York City. The city's school chancellor
has announced there will be no more snow days/school closures 
during winter storms. Instead, they'll switch to remote ]
learning on stormy, cold days. 

 Just a disclaimer here. You will see many mentions in this post that many of you will consider a dirty four letter word that you're not ready for.

Ready? That word is "snow."  So let's get on with it:

The awful pandemic proved that you can get away with working and learning from home via technology. 

Which is prompting some school officials to commit what some kids might consider sacrilege. No more snow days. 

New York City, for one, has announced there will be no more snow days for schools during winter storms. Instead, there will be remote learning. No matter how bad the weather.

New York is joining other towns and cities that are scrapping, or thinking about scrapping winter snow days. 

As early as late autumn, 2020, nearly 40 percent of school districts in a survey were converting snow days to remote learning days, according to, Education Week. Many other school districts were considering it, according to Education Week. 

As David C. Banks, New York's Department of Education chancellor said, "So, sorry kids - no more snow days, but it's going to be good for you!"

I'm not so sure.  

On one hand, it makes sense to change snow days to remote learning days to some extent, but it's still disappointing. It's true that kids need all the education they can get, and by law, they have to be in school for a certain number of days per year. If there's too many snow days, school extends into the summer. 

On the other hand, remote learning isn't as good as in person learning.  That's especially true for families that can't afford decent technology. Or can't obtain or can't afford decent internet access. As we learned in the pandemic, remote learning is also incredibly disruptive to parents who have to work. Do they call in sick to monitor the kids at home? What if their employer doesn't offer sick days? Then they don't get paid. 

I get it that parents also have to watch the kids and miss work if there's a snow day.  I'm not a parent, but I honestly wonder if it's easier to just let the kids play in the snow rather than monitoring them to make sure they're engaged in online earning.  Any parents want to weight in on this for me? I could use the enlightenment. 

One school district in New Jersey told Education Week that they are keeping snow days as it's tradition, a normal rite of passage for kids.  And I agree with that. Even if that means all the kids who had the day off for a snowstorm end up on the sledding hill behind the school. 

I'm in favor of snow days over remote learning. Kids, like all of us, deserve an unexpected break from the routine. Big snowstorms are a nice departure from the usual weekly blah, blah, blah anyway, so why not make winter storms a bit special?