Let it snow: Not all districts OK with virtual snow days

Forecasters expected 2 feet of snow this week from the biggest East Coast winter storm in years, but students in many areas might not rejoice the way they once did.

Snow days, those celebrated breaks from school, are melting away during a time of virtual learning in the coronavirus pandemic.

In September, New York City said the nation’s largest school district wouldn’t have snow days. If school buildings couldn’t open, students would learn remotely.

As the snowstorm bore down, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said school would continue normally Wednesday, with some students learning in person. He promised an update if the storm prevented school buildings from opening Thursday. In that case, he said Tuesday, students would learn remotely.

Education Week, a news organization covering K-12 education, surveyed principals and district leaders in November and found nationally that 39% converted snow days to remote learning days and 32% were considering it.

West Hartford Public Schools in Connecticut will give students the day off only on the first two snow days of the year. Green Bay schools in Wisconsin and the Salem district in Massachusetts won’t have any snow days this year, and Omaha schools did away with snow days permanently.

Other schools told parents to let kids be kids.

“Snow days are chances for on-site learners and virtual learners to just be kids by playing in the snow, baking cookies, reading books and watching a good movie,” New Jersey’s Mahwah Township Public Schools told parents in an email in October. “These are times for memo

ry-making, and we believe these types of opportunities should remain intact.”

The district, which has about 3,000 students, is in a hybrid mode of schooling, in which students attend both in person and online.

Farther north, in Massachusetts, Holbrook Public School District Superintendent Julie Hamilton said in an email Monday she is not getting rid of snow days.

“Teachers in Holbrook come from over 40 other towns which could lead to inconsistency around our ability to run remote instruction if those towns experience power outages,” she said.

Outside the nation’s capital, Fairfax and Loudoun County Public School districts in Virginia left the door open for snow days.

Students in Fairfax County are learning entirely remotely, though there are plans to return groups of students to school buildings starting in January. Although the district has yet to finalize its snow day policy for this winter, officials wrote in an email that this week, “if conditions are warranted, we do anticipate that there will be ‘typical’ snow days as we have had in past years.”

In Loudoun County, students returned to distance learning Tuesday because of a surge in COVID-19 cases in the community. Even so, classes were canceled Wednesday because of the storm.