Happy Back to School Season!

[Shropshire Slasher]

Classes start here at 7:15 for high school, 8:15 for elementary, and 9:15 for middle.

The special part was the robocall at 4:00 a.m. to let you know the school day was cancelled for weather, so you didn't need to wake up.

Depends on your district's bus schedule. When I was in school the middle school went first in the morning, followed by the high school and elementary school (which were adjacent). The difference in bells was probably 10 minutes tops.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Classes start here at 7:15 for high school, 8:15 for elementary, and 9:15 for middle.

The special part was the robocall at 4:00 a.m. to let you know the school day was cancelled for weather, so you didn't need to wake up.

I’m going be the middle-aged man yelling at the clouds here, but robocalls, robotexts and the Internet mean that kids miss out on one of the cooler parts of childhood. Getting up early to listen to the radio to find out if you have a snow day.

Now get off my snowbank.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

I'm going be the middle-aged man yelling at the clouds here, but robocalls, robotexts and the Internet mean that kids miss out on one of the cooler parts of childhood. Getting up early to listen to the radio to find out if you have a snow day.

Now get off my snowbank.

Not me. That defeated the purpose of the snow day: to wake up at the regular time, find out and then snooooze afterward. Especially after the first one when the snowcitement had passed.

The real enemy of the snow day reared its head during covid when schools were on remote learning and were all too eager to fire up the iPads. That changed after a teacher rebellion.

 

[Spartan Squad]

A few years ago, California committed to children getting sleep. Elementary has no restrictions except what is logistical for buses. My son starts at 8am and kids are allowed on campus at 7:30 for breakfast and 7:45 to be on the rest of campus.

Middle school cannot start earlier than 8 and high school cannot start until 8:30. So I begin at 8:30 and kids leave after 3:30. And I’m contracted to stay until 3:45. It really sucks because when I was a middle school teacher, it would take me an hour to drive home with traffic out of San Jose. But I still got home earlier than I do now with half the commute time.

 

[Spartan Squad]

As for holidays and school closures, I’m spoiled in Cali. It takes a real act of God to cause a school to close. The only time I got close was a power outage that forced us to end the day early because we couldn’t safely provide bathrooms (and the principal said it was dumb to make the kids sit in a dark class).

Secondly, we make a purposeful decision to put our son in my district rather than our home district. Now (with one exception) I get the same holidays he gets. I think the one exception in an in service day where he’s off but I have training.

 

[Bud_Bundy]

I grew up in a small midwestern town and our entire school district had under 800 kids in one school with an elementary addition tacked on. My dad was the high school principal. I remember the days when it was snowing and the phone at home would ring at 6 a.m. The superintendent and my dad would decide whether to call off school after getting reports from bus drivers who lived in the rural areas about road conditions.

 

[MisterCreosote]

Our county is so big and spread out, and the weather is so screwy, that we often get snow days in perfect weather because a town 40 minutes away got 3 inches of snow.

Just the other day, thunderstorms came through town. My office got 3 inches of rain. My house, 15 miles away, got nothing.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I swear I remember growing up that they didn't shut down every single school in the city when there was snow. The ones that got too much would close, and the ones that didn't would stay open.

 

[Gym Beam]

Had to look this up to remind myself when school started back in the day (elementary school for me). I was always told they started after Labor Day to accommodate farming families, but don't know how accurate that was.

 

[Roscablo]

Our county is so big and spread out, and the weather is so screwy, that we often get snow days in perfect weather because a town 40 minutes away got 3 inches of snow.

Just the other day, thunderstorms came through town. My office got 3 inches of rain. My house, 15 miles away, got nothing.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I swear I remember growing up that they didn't shut down every single school in the city when there was snow. The ones that got too much would close, and the ones that didn't would stay open.

Our area does it by school district. There usually isn't any further division within that. These days for the most part if the snow is widespread enough everyone just cans it anyway. It actually happens more often than not because of a forecast and not actual snow.

The old way drove my mom, a teacher nuts, because our school district never called. It needed to be a foot minimum and even then it was dicey. But all the other districts would have snow days. I didn't have one snow day in high school. We did have an early release one time.

The going by forecasts is pretty dicey too, but I guess I gett better safe than sorry. A few years ago our district cancelled for the forecast and it snowed two inches. Then a month later it wasn't supposed to snow much and we got a foot and they didn't cancel, although the university did, which is crazy talk around here that it was flipped. Why they couldn't look outside or go the old way of doing things, who knows? That day was a mess, but we at least got to school!

 

[waterytart]

Mom of son’s friend is a kindergarten teacher. On the first day of school this past week, one of her charges dialed 911.

It used to be middle school where the teachers deserved hazard pay.