I’m not worried about broken limbs. I’m worried that a child will be seriously injured or die. Possibly in front of other children at a school bus stop or intersection used by walkers.

Anonymous wrote:What is happening to other places hit by the same storm? Like is this real? Can someone call Bubba and Jethro to make a blow torch ice melting machine so we can get back to normal? This is not brain surgery!

Fern leaving a havoc. But only through Montgomery County.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids should just suck it up and go to school. Oh but the sidewalks are slick! Too bad. Get to school. They should protest this by showing up and demanding an education. These same kids are sledding and running around outside.

Kids will be fine, it is their nasty parents who will sue at the drop of a hat that MCPS is afraid of. If they sled and hurt themselves its on them but if they hurt themselves trying to get to school, the same Karens who want school to open will be calling the media.

10000% correct. Piss and moan about schools being closed but they'll be the first one on the evening news complaining if their 8 year old was stuck on a school bus for 3 hours because it got stuck in a turn lane.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids should just suck it up and go to school. Oh but the sidewalks are slick! Too bad. Get to school. They should protest this by showing up and demanding an education. These same kids are sledding and running around outside.

Kids will be fine, it is their nasty parents who will sue at the drop of a hat that MCPS is afraid of. If they sled and hurt themselves its on them but if they hurt themselves trying to get to school, the same Karens who want school to open will be calling the media.

People keep saying this, but if you look at the pending litigation, there aren't cases like this. The slip and fall cases show incident dates that clearly didn't have snow.

Snow is an obvious hazard and MCPS has already taken extreme measures to address the snow as much as reasonably possible. If you fall, it's your own clumsy fault.

Anonymous wrote:You know what they do in Eastern Europe? They wait for spring to melt the snow. Let's do like them.

Jokes aside, situation around school here is bad. No sidewalks cleaned, no parking lot. Super hard for cars to pass on a two lane road. Don't see how this is going to get done. Pressure is on MCPS but if they open and we have ton of kids with broken limbs on Monday, it will be a bigger scandal.

+100, cue the Bethesda crowd on the news upset because their snowflake was forced to go to school on time. It's now MCPS fault and they want the BOE involved.

Anonymous wrote:The email laid out a whole bunch of requirements for Monday that allows a 2hr delay. Most of the school parking lots are a disaster, roads probably wont be much better. So, plan for a possible day off on Tuesday.

For comparison, UMD college park is also still closed with no heat or hot water. I wonder what the state of schools will be even if they can open.

My MCPS school is older and we had no heat a few days in November and December.

It's not just that the sidewalks are slippery in spots. A good number literally have not been touched at all, and have been made worse by the plows, so you can't even see that there is a sidewalk there because it is covered in 1-3 feet of snowcrete and ice boulders. I came back from an appointment yesterday and there were pedestrians walking in the right lane on Montrose Road because there was nowhere else to go. These are not sidewalks that are in front of anyone's property so it's unclear who is supposed to shovel them.

Anonymous wrote:Kids should just suck it up and go to school. Oh but the sidewalks are slick! Too bad. Get to school. They should protest this by showing up and demanding an education. These same kids are sledding and running around outside.

Kids will be fine, it is their nasty parents who will sue at the drop of a hat that MCPS is afraid of. If they sled and hurt themselves its on them but if they hurt themselves trying to get to school, the same Karens who want school to open will be calling the media.

Anonymous wrote:What have these people been up to all week? I get that this snowcrete is hard to clear but every shopping center and office building in the county has managed to do it!!

Wrong - sidewalks in the shopping center near my home have a nice block of ice but the parking lot is clear though. I had a medical appointment and I had to walk on the snow/ice since there was no sidewalk. I was anxious since I already have a bad hip and holding onto the parking meter till and was relieved when I got to the walk path beyond the sidewalk.

It made me sad when I thought about people less fortunate than I am who rely on public transportation like buses. Near the Ride on bus stop someone cleared a narrow path on the mound of snow, and the sidewalk just on either side of the stop was clear.

Kids should just suck it up and go to school. Oh but the sidewalks are slick! Too bad. Get to school. They should protest this by showing up and demanding an education. These same kids are sledding and running around outside.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What have these people been up to all week? I get that this snowcrete is hard to clear but every shopping center and office building in the county has managed to do it!!

They all probably paid top dollar to private contractors. The county, and more specifically the school system, cannot really do that without budget meetings and votes. I mean it's not the most effective way of doing things but it's how local government pretty much everywhere is set up to operate. I have heard all the rumors that private companies have reached out to MCPS to offer help and that MCPS has ignored them but I bet that probably has to do with the fact these local companies are probably charging 500% of what they normally would.

Our small elementary school already has a small utility tractor with a snow plow. While not very practical for the parking lots, it made quick work of the sidewalks. I don't know how common that is. Even if it's unusual, they only needed to use it for a couple of hours, and those are relatively easy to transport between sites.

School sidewalks seemed to be done pretty quickly in my trip around the Germantown/Gaithersburg/Montgomery Village area. Even schools that had untouched parking lots and bus loops had cleared sidewalks

But the neighborhoods with walkers to the schools have no clear sidewalks so it is still not accessible to walkers

Anonymous wrote:Our PTA volunteered to clear the sidewalks near the school. Reach out to your PTA to see what you can do to help! The contractors are working overtime but this ice is stubborn. It took them 5 hours just to clear the staff parking lot!

How will this make a difference - even if your school is easy to access but other schools are not, MCPS would still close ALL schools.

I think the idea behind opening schools on a case by case basis is a good one. Didn't they float that before?

Anonymous wrote:We knew freezing rain was a possibility. They should have had a crew out on Sunday dealing with snow when it was powdery and then dripping ice melt. You wouldn’t have this impossible mess if you planned ahead.
And the county seriously has to talk to the schools. I walked by the MS near me. The long stretch of sidewalk in front of it is clean but you can’t access the sidewalk due to the huge piles of snow blocking the entry points.
And since I am out walking a lot, I can see how those that put some extra effort in on Sunday aren’t dealing with an ice block mess this week. This storm wasn’t a surprise.

I think it just took everyone by surprise. The county has only so many snow plows and lets say they all made passes on Sunday but never got to finish a final pass on Sunday, those roads would have had ice on Monday which would take extra effort.

From all the various threads here and on reddit that I read - if the driveway was cleared on Sunday after the storm and ice melt was put you were good. Second best scenario was not shoveling anything at all on Sunday and tackling it on Monday. Last and worst case was if you partially did something on Sunday and let that freeze overnight on Sunday. This is for driveways but same case for roads.

We have to drop off our kids at a bus stop and there is no sidewalk to even see now since nothing has been cleared. It is dangerous to have 10 kids on a narrow stretch of road that has been cleared early in the morning with a mound of snow next to the stop and no sidewalk.

Our neighborhood road is now single lane only but we are lucky that we have that access to the main road while many others are not so fortunate.

Closed Monday and Tuesday. They can’t open if community sidewalks aren’t cleared, even if they clear the school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What have these people been up to all week? I get that this snowcrete is hard to clear but every shopping center and office building in the county has managed to do it!!

They all probably paid top dollar to private contractors. The county, and more specifically the school system, cannot really do that without budget meetings and votes. I mean it's not the most effective way of doing things but it's how local government pretty much everywhere is set up to operate. I have heard all the rumors that private companies have reached out to MCPS to offer help and that MCPS has ignored them but I bet that probably has to do with the fact these local companies are probably charging 500% of what they normally would.

Our small elementary school already has a small utility tractor with a snow plow. While not very practical for the parking lots, it made quick work of the sidewalks. I don't know how common that is. Even if it's unusual, they only needed to use it for a couple of hours, and those are relatively easy to transport between sites.

School sidewalks seemed to be done pretty quickly in my trip around the Germantown/Gaithersburg/Montgomery Village area. Even schools that had untouched parking lots and bus loops had cleared sidewalks