I wake up and see the clean, freshly fallen snow. It’s 7 a.m. I check my phone. Once. Twice. Three times. I get the notification. My heart thumps, thinking school is canceled.
It’s a two-hour delay.
My soul is crushed.
Two-hour delays are gut-wrenching. They make my mind want to implode.
When it snows, the district does one of two things: contemplate if they want to be nice and give kids a snow day, or wreck their dreams with the horrible news of a delay.
I hardly consider delays to be a bad thing, but like I said, they crush my soul and send me into a spiral of distress.
The day it starts to snow, I examine the situation for a positive outcome.
First, I must take into account how long and how much it will snow. Then, I notice if it rains a little the night before. If it does, then the water on the roads will freeze overnight, making them icy and undrivable in the morning.
If it snows all night, I might have a good chance of a snow day. If the weather reports say it will continue through the next day, the odds are in my favor.
This intricate series of contemplations leaves me at the end of the night with one final question. Will it be a snow day or will I only get a two-hour delay?
“Snow day, for sure,” I think to myself.
I regret to tell you that about 99.9% of the time, I’m wrong. I did all that work just to find out all I was getting was a two-hour delay. I stalked the weather app for over an hour. I put a spoon under my pillow and whispered “snow day” three times. I even sang “Let It Snow” to manifest a day off, only to be scammed with a dumb two-hour delay.
So yeah, I’m a little upset when I wake up at 6:30 and find out that I still have to go to school. Especially when it’s on a Wednesday and we already get two hours off. Getting a two-hour delay on a Wednesday is the worst thing that could happen to any high school student ever. It does nothing. It means nothing to me. Two-hour delays on Wednesdays should be illegal.
Boulder Valley School District’s job when planning for a delay or closure is to ensure school stays in session, except for extreme weather events. They determine the outcome as soon as possible to let families know so they can plan accordingly.
The district does everything in its power to keep the schools running. They start by clearing the roads, parking lots, and sidewalks at midnight. Then, they send bus drivers to assess the road conditions at 2 a.m.
At 4 a.m. the Assistant Superintendent of Optional Services consults with the snow removal and transportation crew to give a recommendation. By 5 a.m., the custodians are sent to schools to put melting salt on the sidewalks. The final decision is made no later than 5:30 a.m.
What they don’t take into account is the predicted snowfall, temperatures, and how many kids drive to school. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, over 1,300 people are killed in car accidents on icy or slushy roads every year.
No matter how plowed the roads are the morning before school, the ice and snow are still dangerous for students and parents to drive on.
BVSD’s concern isn’t about children’s safety getting to school. They only care about how many hours we spend stuck in a dull classroom, listening to hour-long lectures.
Instead of planning a compressed day of 25-minute classes, it’s both safer and more beneficial to give students a surprise day off in the middle of the week to get homework done, ski, or take a much-needed break to revive their mental health.