As the temperature declines, tension rises among students anticipating when the new announcement sent by Memphis Shelby County Schools (MSCS) administration will come out declaring “Schools are closed due to inclement weather.” The winter season brings many magical blessings, with school being closed as one of them for tired students.
“I think it’s funny,” Aasritha Butti (11). “I think that it’s one of the times you will see us united. The one thing we can agree on, we get excited on snow days.”
For the district administration to call for a snow day, conditions must be extreme. This includes temperatures immensely under the freezing point, consistent thick flurries in the air, and roads blasted with hazardous ice. With these symptoms of the cold season, power outages and internet issues are to be expected.
“Neighborhoods around the school and any area that ]has] school facilities may need to be prone to hazardous conditions for a snow day,” Butti said. “It would mean slippery roads which would prevent students from safely coming in and out of a facility.”
Snow days are inevitable for Memphis, a city known for having some of the most unpredictable weather conditions in the state. As a result, many students in the district grow the expectation of missing at least a few days of the winter season due to extreme weather conditions. However, over the past few years, snow days have been becoming more frequent. This raises the question of if there is a limit to how many snow days can be provided by the district.
“I think there should be [a maximum of snow days] because after a certain [amount], especially if you know MSCS is not doing virtual learnings on days that are school days, you miss a certain amount of instruction,” Butti said. “You won’t be on track for the curriculum you’re meant to be on so [it’s] just a negative cycle.”
It has been four years since the COVID-19 pandemic, a year where many students globally were forced to study in isolation and use virtual learning to stay on track for their education. If many snow days continue to occur, pushing back teachers’ curriculum plans and schedules, virtual learning days are a potential solution to this issue. However, the prerequisites needed are almost unachievable.
“Unless the district provides everyone with the same resources needed to access that kind of learning, I don’t see how these virtual learning days will be beneficial,” Butti said. “Although, I do think they should be giving these resources in case we are in this situation, in that we need virtual learning.”
Many students take snow days as an opportunity for a mental break from the academically intense environment they are used to. Others take it as a day to catch up on any work they might be behind on, a perspective different from the idea that snow days pull students behind on their curriculum.
“I actually take snow days to relax and catch up [with] work rather than feeling behind as I see it as a chance to relax [for] a while,” Hannah Yaghini (11) said. “Especially since the next break we have [isn’t] until Spring Break.”
However, the cons can outweigh the positives for teachers as they are on a tight schedule to finish teaching the curriculum and fulfilling teaching plans by the time of testing. They meticulously plan lessons, but multiple snow days can cause students to lose track of their schedule and can build up work and stress for both the student and teacher.
“[Some cons are] well obviously, [missing] instruction, some people are missing their friends, if they had something they missed that day, they have to reschedule clubs,” Butti said.
