Snow Days

Photo of someone cross country skiing in a snowy landscape with tall trees behind them.

Over the weekend we got not one but two snowstorms. I even made it out to ski around the backyard on Monday. Yes, that little speck above is me. Who knew the trees at the back of the yard were so tall?

There’s rumblings that we might get another snowstorm this weekend, and I believe our other big storm this winter was also on a weekend. So, it would seem the local kids really are getting cheated out of their snow days.

It also made me think of a time-honored tradition that technology has done away with. These days, I’m pretty sure all snow days are communicated by way of a text message alert from the school. While I’m sure that’s a welcome text for any school kid, it does take some of the fun and anticipation out of things. Back in the day, we learned whether or not we were going to have to go to school by listening to the radio.

In my teen years on snowy mornings the who house intercom would be switched to WSUS the local Sussex County, New Jersey radio station, where every 15 minutes or so a DJ would read through the list of closings and delays. We would listen eagerly hoping to hear our school mentioned.

The list was alphabetical. During fifth through eighth grade I was waiting to hear the DJ say “Byram Township schools are closed.” So, I didn’t have to wait too long once they started going through the list. In high school I was waiting to hear whether or not Lenape Valley was closed, so I had a longer wait, and I would impatiently wait through the first half of the alphabet and a seemingly interminable list of schools starting with the letter K.

A lot of times the school administration would first announce a two hour delay. Two hour delays were nice because (at least in high school) they meant shortened periods and no gym class, but obviously what we were all rooting for was a snow day. Once a two-hour delay was announced the radio had to stay on because at any point that two hour delay could be changed to a full snow day.

In fact that’s almost exactly what happened one time when I was in high school waiting at the bus stop. A neighbor driving past in a car stopped to say the radio had just announced that Lenape was closed. Our small bus stop group gladly dispersed back to our houses, only to have the bus heading to our very much not closed school show up at an empty stop a few minutes later. Dad ended up having to drive me to school that day so I didn’t get to enjoy an accidental snow day. Apparently the radio DJ had goofed, or the neighbor was playing a prank on us.

Snow days aren’t really extra days off school. Kids are still mandated to attend 180 days of school. Around here the schools build in a few snow days into the school schedule, and then if they aren’t used school lets out a few days early, or there’s an extra vacation day or two thrown into the spring schedule. The opposite of this is also true, if you end up going over the amount of snow days built into the schedule then you have to make those up. Usually at the end of the year, though sometimes schools cut spring vacation down from a full week to three days. My senior year of high school was apparently extra snowy, and I remember we had to add days to the end of the year so it really did feel like we were never going to be done with school.

One time in elementary school we were in a situation where we would have needed to add a Monday to the end of the school year to get us to the full 180 days, and my school had a much better idea. That spring we had a half day of school on a Saturday, which sounds cruel, but it was actually fun. We watched a movie and played games outside. We learned absolutely nothing. Probably wasn’t what the state board of education had in mind when they mandated that we had to have 180 days of school.

Even though it wasn’t really a bonus day off from school, snow days were the best. There really was something awesome about just having a random, unexpected day off from school. Local kids, sorry about all the weekend storms. Maybe this weekend’s one will at least get you a two-hour delay!