Unless things have changed, the state requires the school to serve lunch before they call school go get state funding for that day. You also have to get a minimum number of students to get the funding for that day. I’m not sure what percentage of students that is, but the person in charge has to make a decision based on more than one factor. Just imagine having elementary, middle & high school all starting at different times all using the same buses. A lot of districts have snow days in their yearly calendar. The district that my wife is in is off today. It is the last day that they can have off without making it up. Remember we are talking about the safety of our kids here. If people from up north think we are so dumb here, they should move back where they came from. It’s starting to look like a good call.

From where I’m sitting looking out my home office window in O’Fallon, MO - schools could have been open. However, I understand why they closed. The dooms-day forecast. I also have to remember that there is a HUGE area of rural roads that my kids’ school buses have to cover, and it could be worse out there. I’d rather them call off school for the whole day than have to get the kids up and out and then turn around in a couple hours and retrieve them again. I happen to have the luxury of working from home so snow days and sick kids don’t hamper my job at all, but when I was working in the office, it was easier for me to just plan for the whole day rather than do all the running around, get into the office, then have to turn back around shortly after arriving to pick the kids back up again. Tough call for administrators I’m sure. I bet they hear both sides every time they close school…give em a break.

It makes good sense to err on the side of safety, even if the odds are against anyone’s being in a serious accident. If there’s a remote chance of a bus sliding off a road on a steep incline, then let’s not risk it. If you want to blame somebody, I suppose you can take out your anger on the weather forecasters for screaming doomsday/blizzard either inaccurately or prematurely, but canceling for a snow day a few times is hardly a reason to panic. We have a foreign exchange student from Russia living with us, and she is VERY happy to get an extra day off — something that never happens in her home country.

We used to walk 5 miles to school- uphill both ways- in deeper snow than this, and barefoot too.
Sissies.

What about teaching kids responsibility for the work force that’s ahead of them. Are you going to teach them that they just stay home when a snowflake hits the ground or when they have a sniffle? My mother sent me to school with a box of kleenex and told me to make the best of the day. Sure I didn’t learn much that day, but I learned how to keeping going though I didn’t feel like it. That’s why I have perfect attendace at work and why they can count on me to be here, no matter what. And when I was a teenager, I didn’t get to drive to school in the snow. My parents wouldn’t let me. (it’s called the upper hand, many parents don’t know the meaning) I do recommend that you take your young drivers out to a parking lot and teach them how to drive in this stuff, they are going to have to learn sooner or later. Better a parking lot than a ditch.

I can also remember 3 inches of ice being on the ground when I was in junior high and Collinsville not calling school. It was so bad that we had to hang on to the bus to keep from falling when we got on or off and had to use school books as sleds to get up and down hills. While every one laughed at you for falling. Think I should have sued for humiliation? Or for back pain because I fell or slipped numerous times on the way home? No, what didn’t kill me, or my back made it stronger.

They will make up for the lost day.I’d like to here from the poor high-school and middle-school buss drivers! I’d also like to thank them I have 2 teens that take the buss everyday I can only imagen how stessfull it must be driving all these kids around a good day!!!!!!!!!

Folks not from here where they get a lot of snow are not generally used to a climate like STL where ice is often an underlayment. That’s what we get here Lisa darlin’. Not cute fluffy snow that you make into a snow person and take pics with your cute kids and pets. We get hard, irregular packed ice that can be invisible. That changes things dear Lisa. Most temporate climates are like that. I suspect if you are here any length of time you will be eating your words. And a lot of comfort foods. LOL Spend your time getting truckers from your old stomping grounds to slow down. They don’t get it either.

#25 A SNOWFLAKE you must be kidding try a billion Rachel be carefull on your drive home I’d hate to see your perfect attendence ruined.

People from Wisconsin handle snow better than people in St. Louis? Imagine that! And I’m sure people from Siberia or northern Canada can cope with it better than smug Wisconsinites who don’t relaize that it’s all relative. It all depends on what you’re used to. Obviously people who are used to a certain type of weather will fare better than those where such conditions are more sporadic. I didn’t think this was so difficult to understand.

Rachel, you sound like the person who comes to work sick as a dog and infects the rest of us. There’s a fine line between a good work ethic and common sense. Maybe you ought to unchain yourself from your cubicle and take a look outside to see that it’s more than a “snowflake”. I don’t think that this would ruin your perfect attendance.