Snow Days: Why We Can’t Keep Skipping

Opinion

By Thomas Saura 

Husky Herald Reporter

   So it’s 5 o’ clock on a Monday morning, you’re just opening up your eyes, trying to freshen up your brain for the upcoming daily adversities. No one understands why you’re getting up--its negative 30 degrees outside with a 2-inch sheet of ice on the ground. Oh yeah, now you remember, it’s time for school.

   You have the same thought as everyone else on this treacherous morning of slipping and sliding: Why do we even have school? You think of all the accidents you’re seeing along Pine Grove as you grip the wheel tighter for safety.

   Let’s face it, the morning rush hour can be extremely hectic and tiring to begin with, add terrible road conditions and an angry teenager and you have a recipe for disaster.  With this winter being in the top three for most snowfall in Michigan history, the probability of an accident increases to an overwhelming amount.

   So why do our school district make us go? Why are our lives on the line every morning as we battle through these fierce storms that leave us at the fate of the road?

   Well, a lot of factors go into this, one of the largest being an issue of money.

Truck covered in snow, on a particularly bad day.
Photo By: Matt Fox

   The problem is we have a mandatory 180 days of school we have to attend. If we go past our allotted snow days, we have to make up the days somehow. One solution to this is adding extra days in June.

   Now this would be an effective solution if budgeting wasn't such a problem. For schools to add in extra days means a whole lot of extra money will have to be spent that wasn't originally planned, and as most of us know, this district is pretty tight on money.

   So why not just add an extra 30 minutes to the day? We could put in 5 minutes to each hour and it wouldn't even be noticeable!

   Well that’s where the problem lies; it wouldn't make a difference in each hour. That would just create an extra 5 minutes to line up at the door and mess around with friends, at the cost of having hundreds of students reschedule work and other extra-curricular activities that are affected by us getting out at 3 o’ clock instead of 2:20 pm.

   So the next time you go to complain about having to come into school on a shabby day, just remember you have a set amount of days you need to be at school. In the Port Huron Area School District there are two certainties in life: You will die, and you will go to school for 180 days.