My son's school, P.S. 29 in Brooklyn, has already cancelled tomorrow's classes, in anticipation of tonight's snowstorm.
It's the kind of thing to make a born Midwesterner like myself shake my head and look away in embarrassment. A snow day called before the snow arrived? Pathetic. Pitiable.
When I was growing up, school was cancelled only as an absolute last resort. There had to be at least three feet of snow on the ground and the roads had be completely impassable by anything save a dog sled. Even then, school sometimes went forward, and if you couldn't find your way there through the drifts, tough! You were marked absent anyway.
Our plows were unstoppable, and hit the ground instantly and continually, creating deep snow canyons through even the most difficult and winding of country road. Often you couldn't see anything except a solid wall of white on either side of the school bus. But the driver could see the road ahead, and that's all that mattered. To hear the name of my school called out on the morning AM radio broadcast was something of a miracle.
But Brooklyn? I guess we're all collectively worried we're going to fall and break a hip or something.
This is the new way, with both parents working now they have to call it early so that arrangements can be made.
ReplyDeleteHeck--when we were kids with walked to school in double the snow, bare foot, uphill, both ways! :-)
I grew up here and I've never seen this amount of panic over snow before. Its just a snowstorm. It happens every winter. And it may bypass the city entirely like the last one did.
ReplyDeleteI guess you know by now they closed the whole school system. My son is almost finished with high school and I can think of only one single snow day prior to this, handled the same way, and of course, the snow never came that day. He spent his entire childhood lamenting that snow days only happen in the movies.
ReplyDeleteAll NYC schools are closed tomorrow. I think it's wonderful to announce it early so parents who have to go to work can arrange for childcare rather than scrambling tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid, I had to walk up hill both ways, on lava, during hail storms of metal. That was on a good day!
ReplyDeleteYou're not in Kansas anymore, you see.
ReplyDeleteI would also like to point out that closing the schools is likely less a result of thinking that nobody can get to school, but rather to reduce the amount of traffic and public transportation usage during severe weather.
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