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Sorry, kids: You have school tomorrow
By adamg on Sun, 04/03/2016 - 7:12pm
At least, in Boston. BPS says:
All Boston public schools will be open on Monday, April 4, 2016. There is a forecast for a small accumulation of snow during the day on Monday. However, we do not anticipate major disruptions or delays. As always, we would like to remind our students, families, and staff to proceed with caution during any inclement weather.
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Comments
This means we are going to
This means we are going to get buried tomorrow, doesn't it?
seriously!
Never fails.
On a more serious note all this school cancellation over 3" of snow made me wonder what would happen if we reversed the policy. Instead of making up anything more than 5 days off from snow, why isn't the policy that we have guaranteed 180 days of school and unless we have MORE than 5 snow days, which is very rare, you make up those days. May need to have a minimum of 175 in a crazy year like last year. Especially in the inner city, can we afford to keep giving kids extra days off? Over 12 years, that's 1-2 months of school in a system that is already struggling. If anything our school year is already too short. Why are we making it so easy to make it shorter?
I'll say it again
There's a damn good reason they should make the call for this the morning of, not the night before. That's what they did in the not-so-old days. Sometimes we know a storm is going to be a whopper. Sometimes we don't. When we don't, just wait until the day of.
Yeah, it kind of sucked for parents. But it wouldn't lead to snow days like a couple weeks ago where the storm was a couple inches of slop that melted on the pavement and was gone by noontime when it was 45˚ and sunny. Or the inevitable eight inches of snow which falls during rush hour and turns to ice and has buses sliding in to utility poles. Back in the day, we had to listen to the guy on WBZ read through hundreds of towns. Now everyone can get an email or a text or a call or whatever with the information at 5 a.m. Forecasting has gotten better, by a little, but communication channels have gotten better by a lot.
And have they all but given up on delays? A storm like this seems like a good candidate for a two hour delay. Let traffic ease up, and get kids to school once the roads are less congested. Wait, that makes too much sense.
No delays in Boston
Boston Public doesn't do delays because of the way the buses are shared across multiple schools/start times every day. Delayed starts definitely would cut down on snow days when it's really just nasty in the morning commute hours.
Reason #2,345 to just eliminate busing
School should be about education, not social engineering.
Not quite
Buses are used to get students to school that live beyond walking distance.
I'm willing to bet anything that your suburban town also use buses to get pupils to school.
As I understand it
The principal reason BPS started busing the majority of their students to schools is not because they don't live within walking distance of one.
And yes, you'll always need some buses. But you'll need far fewer of them if you give up the social engineering aspect and focus on education instead. And, BTW, you'll also save a ton of money that can then actually be put into education - which is supposed to be the principal mission of a school system.
But here's the problem
Boston no longer uses school buses to achieve social engineering. They use it to transport the children whose parents choose a school further away than walking distance since the local schools are crap (excepting of course the children who live near good schools that are oversubscribed and have to be bused to a different school, again due to the school choice system.)
Yes, a big city like Boston has a lot of educational choices for the students, just like how in whichever town you live the high school kids can go to the regional vocational school, again via the bus.
Here's another thing, however:
The local schools always have been rather crappy, and, had certain politicians (who are no longer alive and in office) acted on their own when it came to desegregating Boston's public Schools, even the local schools would've been much better, for both white and non-white kids alike. Moreover, there wouldn't have been the need for a far-reaching, large-scale Federal court-mandated busing order that helped lead to so much chaos, anger, fear and suspicion among people that still scars many people and the city today.
Oh, no doubt
That said, there are parts of West Roxbury that are beyond the limits of making kids walk to school. Personally, I wouldn't want my son to have to walk to what the BPS considers our "neighborhood" school, though oddly I wouldn't mind him walking to 2 other schools that I swear are closer.
That said, kids are going to keep on taking buses to school in Boston, just like they do in Dedham, Milton, Brookline, Malden, Somerville....
The fact that they even have to make an announcement like this
The fact that they even have to make an announcement like this shows how out of hand things have gotten. People have gotten used to everything being cancelled now if one flake of snow is predicted. Get off my lawn please.