I would never want to be the superintendent of a school district.  Like the old saying goes, "You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't."  There's no better example of this than the timeless art of cancelling school due to snow.

It's Murphy's Law.  The school cancellations come in like dominoes on a snow day morning.  Wareham will call...then Old Rochester, followed by New Bedford and Fairhaven and Fall River.  Once they start falling, the rest jump in line and start falling one after another.  A lot of times, the accumulation is right on the money...or even more than what the meteorologists predicted.  But there are also a lot of times that the snowstorm is a straight up bust.  That's when you start seeing articles like this.  They're written by know it all guys like me sitting in their cozy offices watching the snow softly falling and instantly melting on the parking lot outside.  And why wouldn't it?  Wasn't it just sunny and 60's yesterday?  Guys like me become armchair quarterbacks.  Everyone becomes a meteorologist when it snows.  Every parent...a superintendent.

I'm confident that there is much more that goes into deciding to cancel school than meets the eye.  It probably doesn't matter that YOU can get from your driveway to work without much of a problem.  That is apples to oranges compared to whether or not a fleet of buses can be cleared off to safely transport hundreds (if not thousands) of children to school, then have them safely walk into their buildings.  It's an awesome responsibility.  And I don't mean awesome in the Bill & Ted kind of way...I mean it's a sobering responsibility.

That being said...it's hard for parents of school aged children not to remember "when we were kids".  Tell me that we WOULDN'T have had to go to school on a day like this if the year was 1987.  3-5 inches???  Are you kidding me?  OF COURSE we would have!  Not even a question.  So what has happened?  Why are we keeping kids home from school on a day when even the meteorologists were calling for 3-5 inches.  My best guess is liability.  In a society that sues each other for hot coffee being hot...school districts just can't take the chance that something might happen.  That, and CERTAINLY a genuine concern for the well being of our children.

But seriously, 3-5 inches?

 

 

 

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