Anonymous
Post 02/03/2026 08:39     Subject: There will be no school all week - Here is why.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I just worked on my sidewalk. That snowcrete is a major PITA. I was just hammering and hammering on it with a metal shovel until my arms couldn't take it anymore. Wednesday is my goal to have the entire thing done.


Finally got my driveway 3/4 done after several days of chipping away. My sidewalk is still snowcrete. It’s immovable and heavy.


Why the f did you wait until it turned to ice? Serious question.

we had our entire driveway, sidewalk and walkway shoveled in 2 hrs on Monday right after it snowed.
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 23:05     Subject: There will be no school all week - Here is why.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I just worked on my sidewalk. That snowcrete is a major PITA. I was just hammering and hammering on it with a metal shovel until my arms couldn't take it anymore. Wednesday is my goal to have the entire thing done.


Finally got my driveway 3/4 done after several days of chipping away. My sidewalk is still snowcrete. It’s immovable and heavy.


Why didn't you do it earlier in the week? I used a flat edged garden shovel to break through the ice, and then shoveled it to the side. It was hard work and time consuming, but it didn't take 8 days. My kids helped and we were done by Monday evening.
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 22:06     Subject: There will be no school all week - Here is why.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:"...whose owners chose to do nothing". This says more (in a bad way) about the Principal than the neighbors.


FCPS principals put up with a lot. I’m fine with the comment.


If principals really wanted to be proactive they could have asked people to come out and help clear the sidewalks if they were able. I know our school’s parents would have pitched in. But that would require thinking and creativity, and FCPS lacks that

Uhh there was literally an email where they asked the community to pitch in and shovel. The response was derisive and vitriolic. You can find the thread on that on here somewhere
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 21:58     Subject: There will be no school all week - Here is why.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It's not possible to do school until it's at least 55 every day. SO they need to just cancel school till at least March ... if not April 6 after Easter.

How can ANYONE go to school when it's 30 degrees out??? All the kids will DIE!!!


… what the heck. Are you okay? In that case they would close school all winter every winter because of the cold weather. Send your kids with coats, they will not die from 50 degree weather. What are you talking about, 55?!


LOLOL It's called sarcasm. No we should not have closed schools today and no we don't need to close when it's cold. Rainy or winter. That is a joke and making fun of the people who think we need to.

Somehow ... DC had school, THURSDAy. FRIDAY and TDOAY. And they are literally completely incompetent as a gov't. How bad does that mean Fairfax 'leaders' and crybabies are? It's crazy.



ugh still whining
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 21:36     Subject: There will be no school all week - Here is why.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It's not possible to do school until it's at least 55 every day. SO they need to just cancel school till at least March ... if not April 6 after Easter.

How can ANYONE go to school when it's 30 degrees out??? All the kids will DIE!!!


… what the heck. Are you okay? In that case they would close school all winter every winter because of the cold weather. Send your kids with coats, they will not die from 50 degree weather. What are you talking about, 55?!


LOLOL It's called sarcasm. No we should not have closed schools today and no we don't need to close when it's cold. Rainy or winter. That is a joke and making fun of the people who think we need to.

Somehow ... DC had school, THURSDAy. FRIDAY and TDOAY. And they are literally completely incompetent as a gov't. How bad does that mean Fairfax 'leaders' and crybabies are? It's crazy.
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 21:11     Subject: There will be no school all week - Here is why.
Anonymous wrote:In the North, you'd be walking on a snow covered sidewalk. Sometimes you fall. You wear the proper attire and you tough it out.

Former New England are here that is true, but that was snow. We didn’t get ice like you do down here. We would not be walking on the ice because that’s a guaranteed slip and fall.
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 21:02     Subject: There will be no school all week - Here is why.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I just worked on my sidewalk. That snowcrete is a major PITA. I was just hammering and hammering on it with a metal shovel until my arms couldn't take it anymore. Wednesday is my goal to have the entire thing done.


Finally got my driveway 3/4 done after several days of chipping away. My sidewalk is still snowcrete. It’s immovable and heavy.


I worked on a long stretch of sidewalk near our bus stop today. It hadn’t been touched because it’s not right in front of anyone’s home. It was a combo of using a metal shovel to break up the snowcrete, picking up the big chunks and throwing them aside, and then using a bigger plastic shovel to move the powdery snow/ice. Hard work but not impossible. Easier than my gym workouts. I don’t think I would have been able to break it up before it warmed up today.
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 20:43     Subject: There will be no school all week - Here is why.
This thread didn’t age well. We have school tomorrow!
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 20:38     Subject: There will be no school all week - Here is why.
Anonymous wrote:I just worked on my sidewalk. That snowcrete is a major PITA. I was just hammering and hammering on it with a metal shovel until my arms couldn't take it anymore. Wednesday is my goal to have the entire thing done.


Finally got my driveway 3/4 done after several days of chipping away. My sidewalk is still snowcrete. It’s immovable and heavy.
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 20:37     Subject: There will be no school all week - Here is why.
Anonymous wrote:It's not possible to do school until it's at least 55 every day. SO they need to just cancel school till at least March ... if not April 6 after Easter.

How can ANYONE go to school when it's 30 degrees out??? All the kids will DIE!!!


… what the heck. Are you okay? In that case they would close school all winter every winter because of the cold weather. Send your kids with coats, they will not die from 50 degree weather. What are you talking about, 55?!
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 20:34     Subject: There will be no school all week - Here is why.
Anonymous wrote:Why can't parents drive kids if they can't walk?? It seems my options are to either take off an entire day of work and stay home with my kids, or drive them to school. I think all working parents will choose #2.

I get that school isn't childcare, but schools need to understand that parents have to work.


That’s why you need a backup plan, like I did when my kids were young and school aged. And no, it wasn’t family.
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 20:30     Subject: There will be no school all week - Here is why.
It's not possible to do school until it's at least 55 every day. SO they need to just cancel school till at least March ... if not April 6 after Easter.

How can ANYONE go to school when it's 30 degrees out??? All the kids will DIE!!!
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 20:28     Subject: There will be no school all week - Here is why.
It is crazy to make kids go to school!! No-one should go back until after spring break. What if Johnny's shoes get wet!!??? Or Janes pant cuffs get ice and dirt on them. It's inhumane!!!

Oh wait. Never mind .. the people who run our school system are TOTALLY incompetent. Thats how we end up with a 2 month summer ... and give so many days off for teachers, unconstitutional religious holidays and BS like a week off AFTER it snows
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 20:17     Subject: Re:There will be no school all week - Here is why.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Ice and snow are not the same.

They can't snap their fingers and make plows and drivers appear out of thin air. For one thing, southern VA got hit with snow a few days ago, and plows went down there. For another, at least some of the drivers for VDOT are independent contractors with other gigs going.

Ice and snow are not the same.

Weather.com says that highs will be above freezing every day this week,(42 degrees tomorrow). Whatever equipment and manpower that can be deployed will be able to do more than they can in sub-freezing temps. However, large banks of ice will still be hard to clear, especially since we go below freezing every night.

Ice and snow are not the same.

FCPS is not all-powerful and has to work with the weather, personnel, equipment and supplies/budget that they have. This storm is not like other storms because...

Ice and snow are not the same.



Yes ice and snow are not the same but does VDOT know that? Whose bright idea was it to send pick up plow trucks and just clear enough for one car to be able to pass at a time. Were they not aware that we are going to have freezing temperature the entire week and it’s best to clear the entire road because it WILL turn into ice. Such lack of foresight and leadership by Fairfax county.

We had a plow truck in our street on Sunday and they kept clearing a narrow 10 foot lane instead of making sure the entire road was clear. Thats why the buses can’t go on our street and students can’t walk in the narrow lanes because they will get hit by a car. VDOT and Fairfax county clearly mismanaged this. We get it was ice but they knew that 10 days ahead and also had the entire week last week to fix it. FCPS has cleared up all their sidewalks and parking lots but they can’t clean areas that are not in their domain. I too grew up in the north and the county always had a plan for such storms but seems like Fairfax just likes to sit around and wait for the snow to magically go away.


This happened in our neighborhood. It drove me crazy to see them only clear one lane, had a train of trucks been following each other and making multiple passes, while it was still dry as ice powdery sleet, they might have gotten somewhere before it turned to solid ice making it impossible to move without a front loader.

Even at this point the only way to move the massive berms off of the sidewalks is with a front loader.

I saw neighborhood private plow companies being proactive on Sunday with Bobcats moving piles of snow, left by larger plow trucks of road sides and sidewalks. Again before it turned to solid ice.

Those neighborhoods look great.

I blame the ICE crackdowns. This is what happens when you lock up all of the cheap labor and make people afraid to leave the house to work.

Folks in my neighborhood were paying the few brave souls venturing out seeking snow removal jobs $200 to clear parking spaces. These teams were outworking the neighbors shoveling their own ice. They could shovel a spot in 30 mins, neighbors not paying were out there from noon till dusk. My Trumpy neighbor was still shoveling after 7pm. Serves him right.


Oh noes, important people like you might have to actually pay something closer to fees that make things livable or use the muscle you built at your hundreds-of-dollars a month gym to do PHYSICAL LABOR! Oh, the horror! Won't someone please think of the soft-handed sissies who think they are too good to pick up a shovel and too cheap to pay fairly for someone else to do it!
Anonymous
Post 02/02/2026 20:10     Subject: Re:There will be no school all week - Here is why.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Just keep in mind that every private school in the DMV has been open since last Thursday. And yes most of them have buses too.


Short buses.


And pick up and drop off are in large parking lots.


And no private school is juggling walkers, bus riders strewn across 450 miles of Ffx Co., and the general 180k students including SN and handicapped.


So the private schools will continue on, and you’re just fine with that?


You can write your representatives and ask them to pass a bill making it illegal in Virginia for private schools to be open when government schools are closed for winter challenges. Equity!