Where I am…when school,is open, the district must offer their transportation. Rural area…and everyone is bussed.
Every parent needs a snow day plan…for if they need to work, and the kids are off.
Do the areas with current closures haul snow off site? In Massachusetts we have places snow can be trucked to when the snow piles become unmanageable. We call them “snow farms”. The last snow from the Boston farms melted in mid-July last year. I wonder if this may be part of the problem. In Boston we had an incredible amount of snow last year but each closure only lasted a day or two because in between the city would bring trucks and backhoes in to remove some of the excess. If the areas around DC/VA don’t have snow farms I could see the large piles continuing to be a problem.
@raclut - what is even more stupid is that Fairfax County doesn’t require homeowners to shovel their sidewalks. That and many streets in built up areas don’t even have sidewalks.
Yup.
This was from my county "Making an inclement weather decision with regard to schools is rarely an easy decision. It is a large puzzle with many pieces in play. As we went through the course of this week, we opted to make day-by-day decisions with regard to schools for both students and staff. On Wednesday, we announced that teachers would return Thursday and our hope was to open schools for students on Friday. That, obviously, is not going to happen.
As our crews traveled roads today to survey conditions, it became clear that there were two main issues. First, there were too many spots throughout the county where sidewalks and bus stops had not been cleared and students may have had to stand or walk either in a street or in a place that put them in potential danger. Second, the amount of snow pushed by county and state roads crews to clear roads created mounds that, in some cases, would make turning buses difficult and potentially dangerous. That, to be clear, is not the fault of county and state roads crews. They did – and continue to do – an admirable job. Our AACPS Facilities crews also were outstanding, and should be applauded for their incredible efforts.
In the end, there were just too many obstacles to overcome to open schools for students tomorrow. It is one thing to ask adults to drive cars to and from their work locations, as we did today. It is another altogether to put 59,000 students on buses and have 20,000 or so more walk or be driven by parents. The factors in those two decisions are completely different.
As a county, we will now have the weekend to work on those walkways and bus stops for our students. Warmer temperatures will help, but we all must dig deep and help clear the way for students to return on Monday.
Thank you in advance for your help."
The east and south sides of the county get much different weather than the west and north sides do - it’s a long narrowish county that borders the Chesapeake Bay.
No snow farms here. I’ve never heard of them. In 2010, the county piles snow at the high school parking lots, which then meant the kids had nowhere to park when school resumed until park of it was moved yet again. There was snow in some until the end of April. It’s warmer now than it was then, so is melting faster, which leads to the overnight icing I mentioned above.
I remember one year when dd was in elementary school. They had so many snow holidays that they extended the school day for the last quarter in the year. This was needed not only to get through the academic material but to prepare the students for the SOLS exams (standards of learning test given to FFCounty students)
This area doesn’t deal well with snow. Even though schools have been closed all week I don’t see any attempt to clear the bus stops. It is just a mountain of snow. I foresee many parents dropping of their kids to school on Monday.
Day by day the roads are improving. The snow melts in the day and we see water puddles but they freeze again at night leading to icy roads in the morning. It is expected to be in the 60’s next week so hopefully there will be some improvement in the situation.
Enter the Snow Dragon! Huge melting trucks arrive in Washington D.C. in a bid to clear up the 3.49BILLION cubic feet of snow dumped on the capital
BTW, MD schools got make up days waivers in Spring 2003 for the snow and in Sept 2003 for Hurricane Irene. I had kids in school then ,but some of you may not have. And I’m pretty sure they did way back in 1993 when I had a K student.
I haven’t heard of snow farms, but I’ve seen NYC scoop up snow into dump trucks and dump it in the river. That was years ago but I bet they still do it since they don’t even have many parking lots to pile it up in!
http://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2016/01/md-man-spends-40k-clear-street-greater-cause/
$40,000 on equipment to clear snow, and I bet he’s having fun!
MA is unusual in several ways they handle snow, including using the bay, I believe. People also need remember that PA, NJ, NY and New England are far more used to the threat of heavy snow, have more trucks, sand, salt, staff, etc. I know VA has gotten deep snow before. But not 24" plus.
Not sure why people are surprised schools are closed. The suggestion to just cancel busses means kids get to schools how? And in some areas, distances to schools are quite far. Plus parts are quite hilly.
Where I grew up in NJ, it was a rural area. Other than the kids who drove their own cars, everyone was bused to my high school. I remember a few incredible snowstorms but we never had even one instance of more than one day off at a time.
Question for NYC folks – what are the streets like in midtown Manhattan now? I’m going to the city tomorrow, and I need to figure out what boots to wear.
The worst part in Manhattan will be the street corners trying to cross the street. Lots of deep slushy, watery, stuff that will get your feet totally wet. Make sure you have good waterproof boots.
It’s not bad walking around midtown today. At least where I’ve been, they’ve cleared the gutters and you can cross streets without stepping in slush. Lots of people are wearing regular shoes.
As of Wednesday, it wasn’t hard to walk around in Manhattan without boots. Maybe walk a few feet out of the way if there was some kind of puddle, but not bad at all. Brownstone Brooklyn too.
Excellent. I’ll wear boots, but they don’t need to be the walking-in-two-feet-of-snow kind. I’ll be in midtown, too, which I’m sure is in better shape than say, Queens.
The plows finally cleared the sidewalks near the elem school in our subdivision today. That covers 250 on each side of the school, leaving everyone else to walk in the street. We don’t have sidewalks in the rest of the neighborhood. We are also in a county with 200 schools. The county contracts with snow removal folks who can usually manage these storms with a pickup truck and big plow attached to the front. Not so this time. We just don’t get enough big storms to justify the county buying heavy duty snow equipment for the entire county. The heavy duty stuff goes to the main highways. DC has the second-worst traffic in the country. Commuting here is problematic on the best of days.
S2 and I went downtown for a hockey game Wed. night and DC was in pretty good shape. They also got appreciably less snow than those of us in suburbia.
Was this the year they extended the school days by 30 minutes to make up the time? Or was that 2003?