Senate Derp, DERP. Derpitimus Maximus. Derpity deeeeeeerp...

No politics here, but this is so insane I'm still shaking my head over it.

As most of you probably know, the United States Deep South is supposed to get winter weather today. I live in the NC foothills and it was projected that we would see a dusting - up to an inch of snow today while the Piedmont and Coast were to get more. It started snowing around 10:00 or so this morning. By 10:30 it was coming down pretty heavy, though not laying much (yet). About 10:45 I heard that schools in our area were planning to close early today at ... wait for it ... 1:00 PM!

WTH?!! Snow's already coming down, roads are turning slick, and they want to wait and dismiss school at 1 PM? That's nuts. Fortunately the higher ups saw sense and released most schools before noon, though one school system bucked before finally making a decision to release their schools at 2 PM.

Isn't the safety of the students more important than education in this instance?

 

Uh, 1 PM early cancellation for adverse weather conditions beginning at 10 AM is pretty standard. Hell, I'd call it pretty fast.

 

Our campus shut down today as well as yesterday.

 

Uh, maybe for you, but here, if looks like it's going to be pretty bad (which this is shaping up to be) they usually send students home ASAP. Think about it. If they had waited until 1, there could have been accidents with the school buses because of slick roads. There's already been reports online of multiple accidents in one nearby county, icluding a school bus.

 

Meh the school system ain't perfect. During conditions like this in high school, we'd always be released at 1.

 

OK, I thought our local school situation was ridiculous, but at least those in charge showed sense. Not so in Atlanta. I found this comment on an MSNBC article:

"I wrote earlier about the Atlanta Public School System blowing the opportunity to safeguard their elementary school students. It's all over the news in Atlanta and hearing fr some employees; hundreds and hundreds of Atl Public School students are stuck at schools with nowhere to go and no way to get there. No planning, no plan, nothing but APS leadership twiddling their collective thumbs while the mess gets worse by the minute. This is an outrage. And it's not like they didn't have plenty of notice to make a decision. It became abundantly clear last evening that snow and ice was going to hit us head on. Frankly, local school systems should have been closed for the entire day. Atlanta Public Schools have a lot of Q's to answer on this one. But as has always been the case, you won't get anything but blithering excuses out of them - if anything at all."

Checked Atlanta Public Schools' page on FB and it's true; students stuck at schools with nowhere to go.

Morons!

 

I remember when I was in school, the school board was a bit hesitant to declare snow days, so much so that when I was in high school they didn't call off school for the day on a nasty winter day until I had already gotten to school. (Boy, I remember the cheers in the hallways when the vice-principal announced the declaration of a snow day over the school's PA system.)

Now, with all the nasty cold and snow we've been having, they did something unthinkable back in my day: call off school the night before, which happened Sunday night.

Kids today .

 

i'm a little curious about these snow days. how much snow does it take for a school to shut down?

 

that's cute

 

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/201...s-atlanta-strands-thousands-of-schoolchildren

Atlanta officials are going to have a lot of explaining to do.

The bad thing? They probably won't learn any lessons from this fiasco. Next time a winter storm comes through we'll probably see the same stuff happening again.

 

When Britain shuts down for snow we get all the right wingers and anti-'elf&safety' brigade claiming it's just us work-shy nanny-state-pandered weaklings who can't handle a bit of frost. It's comforting to know we're not actually the only ones.

 

To be honest, though, when it comes down to winter weather, Brits are a bunch of wusses.

 

I think it's more a case of any excuse to have a day off work and get pissed.

 

Yeah, so many winter road accidents could be avoided if people would just drive more slowly and carefully.

I our Traffic Code there is this magical clause that says that "the driver must always adjust their speed according to the weather, state of the road surface, and their own driving skill".

 

I could be wrong, but I think most big snowstorms (at least here in the Carolinas foothills) seem to come in March, though we have had our share from Nov. through Feb. too. The 1993 Blizzard, for instance, and the system that dumped several inches of snow overnight in mid March 2005. I remember that one because we were out shopping for the car that eventually became mine. A cold rain was falling that afternoon and evening. When I woke up the next morning there was snow on the ground. Not to mention the more recent blow in March 2010.

 

Ha, that's an apt description!

 

I just find it strange that our campus got two snow days even though it wasn't snowing and it was only about 10 below.