Snow days are essentially a vacation day for students. They provide a break from daily routines. It’s a great time for rest and focusing on things other than work. All students want to do is decompress and chill out at home, especially on days that are cold. Snow days are also an opportunity to spend time with family because usually everyone gets to stay home from school or work.
Staying home from school also gives students a sense of safety because they don’t have to risk slipping on ice while getting to and from school. It decreases the risk of accidents and injuries by a lot. Car crashes in North Carolina jump to 41% during the fall-to-winter period. Just one storm could cause a thousand crashes statewide. Icy roads are a threat that should be taken very seriously, and a way to take this seriously is taking school off.
Some may be worried about how this may negatively affect student’s ability to learn at home, but schools must prioritize safety over attendance. Not going to school can cause students to be behind in classes, especially core classes. Each day that is missed can delay a student’s learning and could even cause them to forget the material that they learned when they were at school. Each class is ninety minutes long. This is ninety minutes they could be learning very important material for school, work, and the future.
A solution to missing school might be remote learning, but no students really want to do that; they want to enjoy their snow day without having to worry about consequences of missing school until they return the next day. The debate over snow days is basically an argument between caution and education. Remote learning is the main answer to the problems that snow days cause, and although students don’t necessarily enjoy having to do remote learning, it’s the best idea to decrease the amount of crashes that could happen from students trying to get to school during this weather.
