Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I'm appreciative that they were slow to reopen for the reasons described in this thread. But more time out of school just isn't tenable. It's going to be below zero all week. The problems present now will also be there a week from now.
I think they should institute some flexibility. For instance, starting 2 hours late but allowing drop off from normal start time until the delayed start time to reduce traffic. Maybe even putting busses on a different schedule spanning that full window (though this may be difficult given that they haven't telegraphed it ahead of time).
I wonder if they could enlist MOCO law enforcement to do traffic control for the morning and afternoon hours?
Ideally, MCPS will use this opportunity to come up with an emergency plan for severe weather in the coming year-- for instance, building it into some employees' contracts that on certain emergency days they are assigned crossing guard duty or bus stop duty to keep kids safe in the morning before school.
I'm not sure about all of these suggestions (teachers as crossing guards seems wrong to me) but I agree that some creative ideas are necessary. How about permitting Zoom school for HS students, all of whom have chrome books? Allow teachers to require asychronous work (esp for AP classes)?
The biggest problem I see - living a few blocks from an elementary school - is that there are GIANT piles of snow and ice at every intersection that reduce visibility. Just yesterday a dump truck T-boned a small car about a block away from the elementary school on my street (NCC.) Most of the neighborhood streets are down to one way (and drivers seem completely unwilling to drive more slowly despite that fact.) I'm not a snowflake but I recognize that there are real risks to 160k+++ kids trying to walk to schools and busstops often before the sun is up with large snow/ice piles blocking visibility.