The public schools around here have already decided to close for tomorrow, and I wonder why.
I take the possibility of a hurricane seriously and tend to err on the cautious side (no hurricane parties); what I question is the timing. So many times in my memory have schools been closed for days that turned out to be absolutely fine. With the weather—especially storms—you simply can't know so far in advance what is going to happen, so why make the decision so early?
I didn't grow up with hurricanes, but we had "snow days," and never knew till the same day whether we'd have school or not. Those are great memories: ears glued to the radio, listening to the list of schools that were closed. It was usually a long list, since most school districts were local and small, and my school district began with an "S" and thus came near the end. Oh, the cheers when they finally called our name (or groans, if they didn't)! My mother cheered as enthusiastically as we did—or so it seemed to me at the time.
The deciding point for closure was whether or not the roads could be plowed in time for the school buses to make their runs. (All but a small handful of us walked to my school, and they never worried about us, but they closed the whole district if the buses to other schools couldn't run. I was grateful for those rural schools.) The Superintendent of Schools would wake up early, assess the situation, and make the decision then.
I don't understand why Florida doesn't do the same.
On the other hand, at least when it turns out to be a false alarm, the kids here have a nice day off. But as I understand it, they must make up missed days later in the year, which we never did, and it sure seems unfair to shorten an expected vacation!
Our school has 5 snow days built into the calendar. The official last day of school is June 9, but depending on the number of snow days, it could be as late as June 16. If we use 2 snow days, it would be June 11.
I think the October storm of 2011 wreaked havoc, because schools were closed more than 5 days and that was only through October! I don't remember what they did. That may have been the year that school went into the June 20-something range. There have to be 180 days of school, so they took days from spring vacation time and teacher work days, too.
As a kid, I don't remember making up snow days, but maybe I was just unaware of the days built into the calendar for that purpose.
I think they weren't as fussy about the number of school days when I was in elementary school. I know they used to count half days as whole days on occasion. Then again, I was completely unaware of how many total days we were in school (other than "too many"), so as long as they didn't take away from the mid-year vacations, I probably wouldn't have noticed if they'd slipped in an extra day or two at the end.
I lived in a land of snow days before I moved to a land of hurricane days. The difference, I learned, was that either school could and would pack a certain number of expected cancellations into the calendar. They might not tell us about it, but they were budgeted. But planning for 5 hurricane days in the fall semester did not guarantee that there wouldn't be 4 days of storms in the spring semester. Whereas in snow country, they didn't have to plan for the earlier semester's delays at all, just the spring.
I don't think anyone effectively planned for this year's storm season... :)
