Friday's "snow?"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When we had the 30” snowfall in 2016, there was an early release because blizzard conditions were moving in. The kids were off school for the next 6 weekdays. One of those days was a holiday, but the other 5 were snow days. It’s absurd that they’ve reduced the number of built in snow days to one since then. I’m not saying we should have 5, but we had 4 when my kids first started in MCPS. Why they think one is sufficient is beyond me.

That was a crazy week

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Safety was NOT of upmost importance in making the decision Friday

Of course it was. Road safety just wasn't the *only* issue considered. If it was, then we'd never open.

No it wasnt and you know it.

I drove on the roads in the morning. They were fine and it was obvious they would be fine. Things went reasonably smoothly and there weren't majors accidents resulting in serious injuries. It went well.

Except the bus that did have an accident and another that got stuck

No serious injuries. Minor accidents happen all the time. And serious accidents can happen on warm, nice days.

My friend’s son’s bus ended up in a ditch. Another at that school crashed. I don’t consider that minor.

Just because you drove a few roads doesn’t mean you had the big picture of the rest of the county.

My young grandchildren’s bus got stuck on a Damascus residential street and they were finally taken to school by a neighbor parent. They said most of the young kids on the bus were scared and crying.

It's good for children to encounter slight adversity even if they are scared at the time.

MCPS got lucky that nothing serious happened. I don’t want them gambling when they make future decisions based on one lucky morning.

All evidence indicates otherwise. The actual experience from opening. The experience from all the other school districts that regularly open under similar conditions. And the overall data for traffic incidents showing much lower rates of serious injuries and fatalities in accidents that occur in snowy or icy conditions.

So the goal is not avoiding an increase in total incidents, but rather avoiding only serious injuries and fatalities?

If you refuse to accept any risk of accidents, then you'd never be able to leave your house.

Nobody’s talking about zero risk; we’re talking about avoiding a known increase in risk a few days out of the year.

We disagree on the risk and the need for closures and delays, but you must admit your view is incongruent with MCPS only having a single snow day in the calendar.

Yes, it is ridiculous that they’ve added more non instructional days to the point that we only have one built in snow day. The benefits of the new transition day in no way offset the downside of having one less snow day built in. That was a poor decision on MCPS’s part, and one they’re apparently sticking with for next year.

+1. I am pretty sure MCPS had more than one snow day on average over the last few years. That MCPS doesn’t actually build the historical snow day usage into their system is just poor planning and a willingness to not have 180 school days a year. (I had 3 snow days in the school district where I grew up-if it was a mild winter and they weren’t used, school would dismiss early for the year.)

[Anonymous]

Grading days are archaic. Teachers arent entering grades in to the system. Thats based on the olden days of mimiographs.
If teachers are still grading papers on those days, they've done a poor job of planning their semester.
Grading days should be ended.

[Anonymous]

Under new grading policy, don't teachers have to grade within 10 days of the due date of an assignment?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Grading days are archaic. Teachers arent entering grades in to the system. Thats based on the olden days of mimiographs.
If teachers are still grading papers on those days, they've done a poor job of planning their semester.
Grading days should be ended.

My kids’ elementary school teachers weren’t entering grades on those days, but their high school teachers sure are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Grading days are archaic. Teachers arent entering grades in to the system. Thats based on the olden days of mimiographs.
If teachers are still grading papers on those days, they've done a poor job of planning their semester.
Grading days should be ended.

Disagree- these days are not just used for grading but processing and submitting report cards but also for prepping for transition into the new semester as it is time consuming.

Let’s let teachers speak to whether or not those grading days are valuable, not those who have never spent any amount of time in the classroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Under new grading policy, don't teachers have to grade within 10 days of the due date of an assignment?

So there shouldn’t be assignments due the last 10 days each quarter?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Safety was NOT of upmost importance in making the decision Friday

Of course it was. Road safety just wasn't the *only* issue considered. If it was, then we'd never open.

No it wasnt and you know it.

I drove on the roads in the morning. They were fine and it was obvious they would be fine. Things went reasonably smoothly and there weren't majors accidents resulting in serious injuries. It went well.

Except the bus that did have an accident and another that got stuck

No serious injuries. Minor accidents happen all the time. And serious accidents can happen on warm, nice days.

My friend’s son’s bus ended up in a ditch. Another at that school crashed. I don’t consider that minor.

Just because you drove a few roads doesn’t mean you had the big picture of the rest of the county.

My young grandchildren’s bus got stuck on a Damascus residential street and they were finally taken to school by a neighbor parent. They said most of the young kids on the bus were scared and crying.

It's good for children to encounter slight adversity even if they are scared at the time.

MCPS got lucky that nothing serious happened. I don’t want them gambling when they make future decisions based on one lucky morning.

All evidence indicates otherwise. The actual experience from opening. The experience from all the other school districts that regularly open under similar conditions. And the overall data for traffic incidents showing much lower rates of serious injuries and fatalities in accidents that occur in snowy or icy conditions.

So the goal is not avoiding an increase in total incidents, but rather avoiding only serious injuries and fatalities?

If you refuse to accept any risk of accidents, then you'd never be able to leave your house.

Nobody’s talking about zero risk; we’re talking about avoiding a known increase in risk a few days out of the year.

We disagree on the risk and the need for closures and delays, but you must admit your view is incongruent with MCPS only having a single snow day in the calendar.

Right- I think that's part of the problem. I feel like MCPS and some parents want to have their cake and eat it too- they want to be like a southern school district and close/delay for any slippery conditions. And for somewhere like Atlanta, those events are infrequent enough that one built in snow day is probably fine. But we have way more of those days here in the mid-Atlantic. Folks either need to adapt and learn how to manage these minor events or encourage MCPS to build in more snowdays to the calendar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Grading days are archaic. Teachers arent entering grades in to the system. Thats based on the olden days of mimiographs.
If teachers are still grading papers on those days, they've done a poor job of planning their semester.
Grading days should be ended.

My kids’ elementary school teachers weren’t entering grades on those days, but their high school teachers sure are.

What does this have to do with snow?


Parents are absurd

Don’t have kids if you can not take care of them on snow days

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Grading days are archaic. Teachers arent entering grades in to the system. Thats based on the olden days of mimiographs.
If teachers are still grading papers on those days, they've done a poor job of planning their semester.
Grading days should be ended.

Tell me you know nothing without telling me you know nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Under new grading policy, don't teachers have to grade within 10 days of the due date of an assignment?

So there shouldn’t be assignments due the last 10 days each quarter?

There wasn't the last week of Quarter 1.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Grading days are archaic. Teachers arent entering grades in to the system. Thats based on the olden days of mimiographs.
If teachers are still grading papers on those days, they've done a poor job of planning their semester.
Grading days should be ended.

My kids’ elementary school teachers weren’t entering grades on those days, but their high school teachers sure are.

What does this have to do with snow?

Parents are absurd

Don’t have kids if you can not take care of them on snow days

So you actually think parents are thinking of school snow days before conceiving a child? lol

[Anonymous]

^*Do you think

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Grading days are archaic. Teachers arent entering grades in to the system. Thats based on the olden days of mimiographs.
If teachers are still grading papers on those days, they've done a poor job of planning their semester.
Grading days should be ended.

My kids’ elementary school teachers weren’t entering grades on those days, but their high school teachers sure are.

What does this have to do with snow?


Parents are absurd

Don’t have kids if you can not take care of them on snow days

Friday wasn't a snow day.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I drove my kid to school Friday and it was slippery even on the main roads (I’m in the DCC). But I drove more slowly and kept a longer following distance and we got there fine. It just took 5-10 minutes longer than normal. I did slide a couple of times when I was turning a little too quickly.

I would have preferred a delay and that would have been more consistent with Tuesday but I don’t think this was a disaster.

This thread demonstrates that there are a lot of people that don't think they should ever have to drive slower. Earlier in the thread some teachers were saying they wouldn't leave home earlier than their normal time, despite knowing that it would (or should) take longer than usual.

If MCPS doesn’t make the call the night before, you have to wake up to find out what their decision is. Historically, they would have a delay when there’s wintry mix during morning rush hour. I can understand why people didn’t set their alarms extra early. If you didn’t get up earlier than usual, how much earlier could you leave?

I managed to order snow boots three days earlier and woke up early on Friday because I knew my kid would be excited to play in the snow before we drove very slowly to school. You don't need to have a crystal ball to plan ahead a little bit. But I guess it's different for me because I don't associate a chance of 1 inch of snow with getting to go to work late or not having to work at all. It often means scrambling in the morning to figure out child care coverage with my DH and reschedule meetings if needed.

I am really confused. You often have to scramble to figure out childcare on snowy mornings, and often do so by rescheduling meetings, because you don’t plan ahead for weather.

But a teacher who didn’t have childcare arranged that let them leave early should have predicted and planned in advance?

I have been in education, or parenting schoolage kids, or both in this area for 20+ years. Based on those years I went to sleep assuming that either the predicted snow would turn to rain, or that the would call a delay. If I still had little kids, I wouldn’t have planned for too much snow to get from daycare to school on time, because that hasn’t been the pattern before. I also didn’t plan for having to cover colleagues who didn’t make it on time due to similar reasons.

Most things were open like normal on Friday. You didn't need to do much other than wake up a little early.

If your child care arrangements only work for ideal weather conditions, without leaving any soon for longer driving times for any reason, then you should already have backup plans.

There isn't an underground workforce of women ready to care for other people's children on a snowy day. Normal people know this and acknowledge that parents have to miss work when their regular childcare arrangements get canceled, unless they have family in the area that can do this.

Snow isn't the only thing that comes up that might require you to leave home 30 minutes early. So you probably factored that in when you selected child care. For instance, it is common to pick child care locations that are close to work, rather than being close to home. If you didn't do that, then you probably had back up plans.

The idea that people couldn't leave home early is absurd.

+1. People deal with this everywhere. People in the DMV are such snowflakes about any little departure from the norm.