Every year, there are days when school needs to close simply because teachers or students have a real hardship getting there or being there. “So what,” you say, “roads bad, buck up little private.”

It’s the same thing with illness…”Just take a pill, and it will be over before you know it.”

And my favorite, “No power? Well, when I was a child…”

Closing a school, much less a whole school system, is a huge decision. Quite frankly, I can’t imagine how a superintendent must feel at making the decision for thousands of people. It means that parents lose work time; it means that children are often left at home alone; it means that hourly workers lose livelihood pay, and it means that the whole week is turned upside down by in today out tomorrow…half day here…and the continuity or progression of learning is sideswiped.

So far this year, I have tried to stay open on two occasions when all other schools have closed, and the end result was chaos and danger to my teachers and quite frankly the kids who were picked up in the middle of an ice storm.

When the first priority is safety in all other endeavors, why are dangerous roads suddenly not a matter of concern? Is it that once a child leaves YOUR building it suddenly becomes the parents’ responsibility? When reading, discipline, manners, and all other formations are parent-teacher partnership, why does it end at the door? It shouldn’t.

Jobs are important, and everyone knows that. But between mom, dad, and four loving grandparents, some kind of safety net for the saving of job hours should be able to be worked out before it happens. We all know that there are school closings and delays., holidays, vacation weeks, and sick days.

This has been a particularly difficult year with more half days and snow days than we usually have. Right along with the ups and downs of the daily temperatures, comes the flu bug, the bronchitis dragon, the sinus elephant…the ear infection snake that sets his teeth in and grips on and won’t let go. And this makes providing a boss with a parent’s full attention about as easy as quantum mechanics done in your head.

So the idea is that we work together to get through this winter with as much charm and success as we can. Please be aware that we are trying to accommodate everyone. So as I take off first this morning in my seventeen year old car (love my jeep) onto my sheet of ice road that has not been plowed, and take the “hill” that would defy the Archangel Gabriel, I will see you all later…I hope.