Snow days are very disrupting for parents, teachers and businesses. Parents must scramble to find someplace for the kids to go or stay home from work with them. Teachers lose a day in the rigorous schedules of keeping our kids on track for mandatory testing. Last but not least businesses lose a lot of productivity from parents having to take the day off to stay home with their kids.
Some parents who have kids in day care are not as affected by snow days they can still go to work. Other parents must find other arrangements and often times have to decide which parent will stay home with the kids on the snow day. Even if that parent has a way to work from home there will be a disruption of his/her concentration and productivity.
Modern teachers have a very rigorous and tight schedule of lesson planning in order to prepare our children for mandatory state and federal testing. Snow days create problems for them. They must intensify the amount of homework our children bring home and cut out some of the fun activities that break up the days. Snow days for teachers are stressed.
Most businesses have ways for workers to work from home on snow days, but none the less know that the productivity for those workers is going to suffer. The amount of money lost to a business during these weather related emergencies is pretty significant especially small businesses. Any day to day disruption in productivity is a loss to any business.
My thought is this: Let's go back to our childhood when snow days meant an unexpected play day. When I was young we took out our sleds and found a hill to sled down. We dragged our parent or parents with us and usually they had as much fun as us. Our teachers could spend a day relaxing while reconfiguring our lesson plans. Businesses thought far enough ahead that snow days were expected and planned for. Let's all think of snow days like we were children and the stress is lifted. Have fun, live a little.
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