Dear Mr. Dempsey. What are You Saving the Snow Days For?

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Snow on Da Ground, Snow on Da Ground":

Dear Mr. Dempsey,

As a district parent I am used to unusual decisions regarding education (Investigations math, Stratford not purchasing ELA review books) but I have to say that the decision to have a delayed opening after the severe weather we had is just plain wrong.

Let's do the math. The school day is 6 hours long. Take 90 minutes off that right off the bat. We're down to 4.5 hours.
Will the buses get the kids to school on time? Let's take off a half hour for late buses, kids changing out of snow boots, snow pants.
We're at 4 hours.
Take out for lunch and rec.
We're down to about 3 hours of potential instructional time.
But not really since the elementary dismissal process begins well before 3:15 with some walkers getting out as early as 3:05 (Stratford) so let's take off another 20 minutes so with rounding we have about 2.5 hours of potential instruction time with a delayed opening of 90 minutes.

I'm unsure why we would opt to send kids to school for less than half a day's instructional benefit when we have snow days figured in the school calendar. Kids can go to school on those days for the full 6 hours and receive maximum instruction time.

I don't know about anyone else's part of Plainview-Old Bethpage but my house got a lot of snow. I shoveled twice during the day over an hour each time (at least 4-5 inches each time) and took another two hours to complete the job after the evening brought at least another 8-10 inches. I'm not done since when the plow makes it way down my block I will again have to clean the apron of my driveway. I estimate that to take at least 45 minutes.

Just cleaning my car off created about 4 inches of snow surrounding it. Tonight's snow was so dense it broke my new telescoping car snow cleaning device.

So far I haven't see anyone shoveling their sidewalks. There's barely any place to put the snow to dig out the cars in our driveways. I have drifts well over 3 feet on both sides of my driveway.

Kids are going to have to walk in the streets and wait in the streets for buses. It's very unsafe.

Every bordering school district made the decision to close their schools tomorrow.

It's not too late to get the phone link and email alerts going and close the schools.