Let it snow: Now maybe I can get something done
- Michelle Wood: SWCD
- January 11, 2010
- 933
Growing up over the Stark County line in the Tuslaw school district, we could pretty much count on a few snow days every year. North Lawrence was in a valley and when the storms came, buses couldn't get down or up the hills to pick up students. Back then, lots of kids lived on farms and those lanes just didn't get plowed as a matter of course.
During the Great Blizzard of 1977, we were so isolated, it took us the better part of a week to see the headline in the Massillon paper: "North Lawrence Isolated By Snow."
But I've come to look at snow days differently. The state gives districts five "calamity days" – free passes due to weather, power outages, national emergencies, etc. – which do not have to be made up. Soon, as part of education reform, that number will be cut to three.
Some people aren't happy about that. It seems some folks have sort of just factored those free days into the school calendar.
If you're one of those unhappy sorts, be glad you don't live south of here, where the Buckeye Central district's board decided to forego the calamity days. If the district closes for a storm or other calamity, that day gets made up at the end of the year.
Good for them, I say!
In the district, a good-sized group of students and even a few teachers put up a good old-fashioned democratic protest -- complete with T-shirts -- about the decision. Some students argued that the potential for adding days at the end of the year would interrupt college orientations, sports camps and summer jobs.
The president of the teachers' union said eliminating the calamity days won't help test scores, since adding days at the end of the year puts them after the all-important achievement testing, which occurs in May.
Those reasons, I would maintain, are part of what's wrong with public education in the U.S. and in Ohio, in particular.
Which five days of the instructional year are insignificant enough that they can just be eliminated? No need to make up Feb. 1, right? I mean, what goes on in math that day? Short division? Weights and measures?
We can probably skip a few Civil War battles or perhaps a dynasty or two. And really, do you need to know how to conjugate the "be" verbs? Stick to the skeletal system but don't bother with the muscles.
Saying we don't need to make up snow days is like saying some days just aren't that important. I mean, it's just the educational process and we can't take it that seriously, can we?
Maybe if we all sit down and look at it, there are some other days in the school calendar that we don't need to make up. Fridays – those are pretty much write-offs, especially if there's a pep rally or a Homecoming assembly. And the week before Christmas break. Are you kidding? Nothing gets done then, either.
Eliminate the whole last week of the school year, because it's just time for cleaning out lockers and having end-of-the-year celebrations.
Yup, that's the value we place on instruction time in public education. It comes after summer jobs and sports camps and family vacations and achievement test prep on the priority pecking order.
The rest of the world speeds ahead. Long gone is the outdated agrarian school year. Achievement is judged by what the student does daily, not by the standardized tests we hold onto like the Holy Grail.
Education is a good thing when it's convenient. It's something we focus on when we finish all the other "important" stuff.
Well, in that case – let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
Tami Lange can be reached via e-mail at tam108@hotmail.com.