No Snow Days from School?

School snow days are such an understood reality of life in New England that they are ingrained among the rites and joys of growing up in this part of the country.

And yet, in the new realities of life from the COVID-19 pandemic, snow days from school have been, well, cancelled.

For this year, anyway.

The Consolidated School District of New Britain has announced that, “At a recent meeting, the Board of Education for the Connecticut State Department of Education voted to allow snow days to be converted to remote learning days.”

“As such,” the New Britain school district says, “we will follow this new standard throughout the upcoming winter months.”

The school district says that when, “conditions are deemed unsafe,” for, “movement to and from school,” the school district, “will do our best to make an announcement the evening before regarding our plans for full remote vs. in-person learning.”

An exception that would require a school cancellation, according to the school district, would be, “widespread power outages throughout the city.”

The school district does make a point to remind families that,

To ensure you are receiving the latest communications from the district and your child’s school, please check your Power School account or with your school secretary to confirm the accuracy of your contact information currently in our system.

As school districts have continued to develop their capabilities in carrying out distance learning, some people have already been speculating if these new technologies and techniques, born of necessity, might obviate the need for school snow cancellations. If students already can do distance learning, the reasoning goes, then why cancel school for the day because snow makes getting to school unsafe.

But whether snow days might become a thing of the past is not what that current discussion has been about. The resolution approved by the State Board of Education on October 7, 2020 said that the current policy is intended, “during the 2020-2021 school year only,” because of the pandemic.

So, snow days would, perhaps, return next year.