Snow Days in Quarantine
By Steven Martinez ('21)
With the winter season upon us, many North Rockland families wonder how snow storms may affect remote teaching. In a conversation with North Rockland High School’s Leadership Council, Superintendent Dr. Felicello discussed the future of remote learning with a selected committee of students. After some deliberation, the general consensus was to keep snow days! This decision is largely due to various factors that many people often overlook in the discussion of keeping schools open. The system set in place by Dr. Felicello includes a color system in which different colors indicate different levels of severity. Any color but red means that Asynchronous will continue and that weather conditions are favorable enough to continue school. Red is the highest level on the system and means that weather conditions are dangerous and could potentially cause power outages.
Many parents and staff realize that many people often lose electricity during snowstorms which helped the council come to their decision. While snow days are often called due to roads being too dangerous to drive on prior to Covid-19, a new issue has arisen. Students whose WiFi is affected by snowy weather would be at a disadvantage if school continued to run online. If the power is out, it would be catastrophic for the learning environment of everyone involved. Electricity is so important and is one of those things that impacts society as a whole. It keeps our food refrigerated, our houses warm, and people connected. It plays a vital role in the process of learning and development of students trying to learn online. The first snow day occurred on December 17th due to a snowstorm that was predicted to be one of the largest in recent history.
Another point to bring up is that virtual learning would ruin the magical experience of snow days. The Leadership Council took the younger kids into consideration and came to the conclusion that it would ruin the fun that so many younger kids experience on snow days. There is something marvelous about seeing the crystal white snow fall through your bedroom window. The playing and indulgence aspect of being a kid is something that our district did not wish to take away from its younger demographic.
Many different factors that must be taken into account with snow days during Covid-19. The rest is yet to come and we can all only wait and see how North Rockland High School will react next to the next snowstorm.