MCPS closing/delaying on Monday?

[Anonymous]

How much snow is outside right now? Haven’t been able to measure yet and I’m curious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet 2hr delay/no school Wednesday.

At least a 2 hour delay.

There is no delay for more than 2 hours. It's either a 2 hour delay or a closure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looks like constant heavyish snow until evening and tomorrow temperature should be in the teens. I for one would not mind tomorrow being another snow day.

Tomorrow will be another snow day.

Yup! At least 4 inches in my neighborhood forecasted to snow until 10pm-12am

[Anonymous]

How many snow days were built in to the calendar this year? If kids can't go to school with any icy/snowy sidewalks, but also not in the summer because of poor AC, would there have to be makeup days over spring break? There are only so many ways to fit in 180 days. Gotta pick your poison- although I must say I've never lived somewhere so.....delicate.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Okay so the forecast looks pretty clear on sizeable snowfall starting late Sunday into Monday. This is a clearly going to have a snow day scenario IMO. When will MCPS announce that? This afternoon? This evening? Tomorrow morning?

They will call by 8pm tonight
Cancelled

Call at 8pm tomorrow night
Cancelled for Tues

Call at 5am Wed
Cancelled for Wednesday

Call at 5am Thurs
2hr delay on Thursday

lol. Sorry, you're going to have to go to work before that!

Not a teacher and I work from home. My youngest of 4 is a sophomore and I know MCPS. They won’t even begin to shovel out schools until mid day Tuesday and the school parking lots and walkways will not be done and treated by Wednesday morning. It will easily be 3 days off

Mid-day Tuesday leaves plenty of time to clear parking lots and walkways by Wednesday morning.

I think we'll find that last January's failure was a wake-up call to MCPS admin. It was very unusual for the county to publicly call out MCPS's BS about the response to that storm. As screwed up as MCPS is, they must have made changes after that. I don't think we'll see a repeat.

MCPS never makes changes and there has never been a storm of a foot of snow and ice where schools weren’t closed for 3 days. If it was ending early Monday, maybe but the warning ends 1am Tuesday. If you all think the county will have 200+ school parking lots, bus lots, and walkways all cleared and treated in less than 24hrs, you are delusional.

I think there are some posters on this thread who aren’t aware of how much work there is to do (bus lots, parking lots, sidewalks, damage to school buildings, heating concerns, pipes, access roads, etc.).

They also aren’t aware of staffing issues, and that there isn’t an army of people at the ready to prepare all of these schools.

So to them, this is easy.

But you see, they don’t CARE. Their KIDS have been HOME for TWO WEEKS (insert dramatic gasp here).

MCPS has 25,000 employees, including 1500 building services employees. Do they disappear when it snows?

What does this even mean?

It means that, on average, each school has 6 or 7 employees, some of whom work part time and/or the evening shifts and have other jobs in the morning so they aren't available to help out with clearing in the morning.

That's incredibly poor planning if the people the school has hired to, in part, do snow removal aren't actually available when snow removal would be needed most.

Is that true? They don't expect building services workers to be available to work in the morning?

A lot of things of come out in this thread suggesting there are some very basic steps MCPS can take to make things significantlt better:

1) Ensure building services workers are available to work at ~5am during winter months.

2) Budget overtime for building services workers to do snow removal.

3) Allow building services to begin clearing sidewalks around schools before parking lots are cleared..

I'm guessing those aren't problems at all schools, but it sounds like different schools have some combination of those problems.

I mean, snow removal is really not their main job by a long shot? It's something they do a handful of days a year at most, some years never, and so they hire people based on the hours they are needed 98% of the time, not based on their snow day availability. (If you want them to be available for both, you should really be paying them more.)

It seems like there should be a different plan for snow removal, like contracting it out, or having a list of MCPS employees (of all types) who are potentially willing to pick up a snow removal shift for extra cash, or something like that.

You don't think MCPS would be able to hire building services workers if they required them to be available to work in the mornings? I bet they would. Those are more desirable jobs than something like a bus driver.

Half of all of the building services workers at any school I've worked at work part time in the evening after the kids are gone, and all the ones I know have other jobs, often jobs that will want them to come in and do snow removal there, but also things like health care, or food service. Do you think they would be able to fill those jobs, that don't on their own pay a livable income, if they didn't let them have a second job so they could be on call for the mornings? I do not.

This.

Our PM staff all either come straight from their AM job or leave at 10 pm for their overnight job. They are highly sought after and usually get poached by their other employer to go FT. We’ve lost three people to local hospitals this year.

So those PM workers currently on the payroll are available tomorrow in the PM to get schools ready for Wednesday?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much snow is outside right now? Haven’t been able to measure yet and I’m curious.

In Boyds, 5". It mostly stopped at about 3-4am. It's blowing around a little, but not much has accumulated since then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How many snow days were built in to the calendar this year? If kids can't go to school with any icy/snowy sidewalks, but also not in the summer because of poor AC, would there have to be makeup days over spring break? There are only so many ways to fit in 180 days. Gotta pick your poison- although I must say I've never lived somewhere so.....delicate.

2 days are in the calendar.

There's going to be a huge fight between parents and teachers over repurposing professional days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How many snow days were built in to the calendar this year? If kids can't go to school with any icy/snowy sidewalks, but also not in the summer because of poor AC, would there have to be makeup days over spring break? There are only so many ways to fit in 180 days. Gotta pick your poison- although I must say I've never lived somewhere so.....delicate.

Last year they did some kind of work at home make up day where my kindergartener came home with a packet.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Everyone needs to get a grip. No amount of vitriol here will change what day the kids go back to school. I realize some of you think this is fun...but sheesh, go play in the snow with your kid(s). And don't tell me you have to work, you're here, so clearly not.

I think most people here understand today's closure. Many also get why tomorrow will be closed. But they should be able to open on Wednesday, yet they probably won't. Hopefully the childcare providers will be allowed to open on Wednesday.

It is not just that people have to work. As someone else mentioned, kids with disabilities are not getting services while schools are closed. For us it meant a big delay in something my kid really needed because of the availability of the psychologist. I wasn't angry (that was a necessary closure) but please stop pretending this doesn't really affect anyone. Nearly half of MCPS students receive FARMS - do you really think their parents still get paid when they have to take off work?

They need to plan like the rest of us, sorry.

The plan for the situations I mentioned is people have less money they really need and kids don't get services they need. No other option.

On the flip side, rich SAH parents get to spend a lovely day with their neurotypical kids playing in the snow and planning the vacation they're going to take over MCPS's make-up days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many snow days were built in to the calendar this year? If kids can't go to school with any icy/snowy sidewalks, but also not in the summer because of poor AC, would there have to be makeup days over spring break? There are only so many ways to fit in 180 days. Gotta pick your poison- although I must say I've never lived somewhere so.....delicate.

Last year they did some kind of work at home make up day where my kindergartener came home with a packet.

They're not allowed to do that anymore. The previous allowance for that wasn't intended to cover normal/expected snow events like that (or this). Districts are expected to have real make-up days for forseeable weather events.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many snow days were built in to the calendar this year? If kids can't go to school with any icy/snowy sidewalks, but also not in the summer because of poor AC, would there have to be makeup days over spring break? There are only so many ways to fit in 180 days. Gotta pick your poison- although I must say I've never lived somewhere so.....delicate.

Last year they did some kind of work at home make up day where my kindergartener came home with a packet.

They're not allowed to do that anymore. The previous allowance for that wasn't intended to cover normal/expected snow events like that (or this). Districts are expected to have real make-up days for forseeable weather events.

Oh no that sucks.

Then 2 snow days doesn’t seem realistic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many snow days were built in to the calendar this year? If kids can't go to school with any icy/snowy sidewalks, but also not in the summer because of poor AC, would there have to be makeup days over spring break? There are only so many ways to fit in 180 days. Gotta pick your poison- although I must say I've never lived somewhere so.....delicate.

Last year they did some kind of work at home make up day where my kindergartener came home with a packet.

They're not allowed to do that anymore. The previous allowance for that wasn't intended to cover normal/expected snow events like that (or this). Districts are expected to have real make-up days for forseeable weather events.

Oh no that sucks.

Then 2 snow days doesn’t seem realistic

Why? As you almost certainly saw last year, that make-up day was a joke. MCPS should have implemented one of the reserved make-up days. There were two very good options but MCEA fought efforts to use them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many snow days were built in to the calendar this year? If kids can't go to school with any icy/snowy sidewalks, but also not in the summer because of poor AC, would there have to be makeup days over spring break? There are only so many ways to fit in 180 days. Gotta pick your poison- although I must say I've never lived somewhere so.....delicate.

Last year they did some kind of work at home make up day where my kindergartener came home with a packet.

They're not allowed to do that anymore. The previous allowance for that wasn't intended to cover normal/expected snow events like that (or this). Districts are expected to have real make-up days for forseeable weather events.

Oh no that sucks.

Then 2 snow days doesn’t seem realistic

Disagree, it is a good thing. Kids don’t learn anything on those asynchronous days.

Absolutely MCPS needs more days built in. Next year there is only 1.

[Anonymous]

There's a makeup day on Friday June 6th. They should use that before taking away from spring break or adding on to the end of the year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone needs to get a grip. No amount of vitriol here will change what day the kids go back to school. I realize some of you think this is fun...but sheesh, go play in the snow with your kid(s). And don't tell me you have to work, you're here, so clearly not.

I think most people here understand today's closure. Many also get why tomorrow will be closed. But they should be able to open on Wednesday, yet they probably won't. Hopefully the childcare providers will be allowed to open on Wednesday.

It is not just that people have to work. As someone else mentioned, kids with disabilities are not getting services while schools are closed. For us it meant a big delay in something my kid really needed because of the availability of the psychologist. I wasn't angry (that was a necessary closure) but please stop pretending this doesn't really affect anyone. Nearly half of MCPS students receive FARMS - do you really think their parents still get paid when they have to take off work?

They need to plan like the rest of us, sorry.

The plan for the situations I mentioned is people have less money they really need and kids don't get services they need. No other option.

On the flip side, rich SAH parents get to spend a lovely day with their neurotypical kids playing in the snow and planning the vacation they're going to take over MCPS's make-up days.

It's clear in many people's minds MCPS parents are either wealthy and entitled or poor and irresponsible. By thinking this they can pretend it's okay to hate the people they serve.