Snow Days??

[Kat&Dom]

I have been reading some of the threads where people talk about using up their snow days. I can't recall having snow days when I was in school so I went to my son's school district website and there is no mention of snow days at all. Is this just an American thing or do school districts in Canada budget snow days into their attendance policy too? It doesn't seem to matter how much snow we get, nothing closes.

 

[Ted in Halifax]

Schools close here all the time. Even when I was a kid ... although not as frequent as nowadays ....

 

[casper_jj11]

I know that here, the schools are open even on 'snow days'. Its just the buses that are cancelled. If you want or need to, you can drive your kiddo to school. I figured most kids stayed home (when I grew up in NL, snow days meant schools were closed completely) but last week busses were cancelled and there were only 4 kids missing from DS's class. I worked from home taht day but for parents that don't have that option, I guess it makes sense. Anyway, bottome line here is that schools don't close for snow days so there's nothing to budget into the number of school days for the year.

 

[coastgirl]

I have heard threats that "if we have any more snow days we'll have to add days somewhere else", but never had it actually happen. I know I have a friend in Georgia who's already losing the President's Day stat holiday b/c of snow. (But they were in bad shape with no equipment to clean up, and school closed for about a week based on one ice storm.) I've never seen it formalized in a Canadian district, but that's just my experience.

 

[dancin Disney style]

I don't think that it is a formal number of days but they do plan for a day or two per year. It is required by legislation that the kiddos be in school for a set number of instructional days per year(188 I think). If they were to miss more than the required number of days they could add them on to the end of the school year. I'm not sure how that would work with teacher contracts though.

We had one snow day last week. So far no bus cancellation days. It's not unusual for the busses to be cancelled several days per winter.

 

[Thumper_ehhhhh]

Our kids just had a snow day. 1st one in many years. The school board makes a decision by 6am on if they think it's safe for the teachers and kids to get to school. The school buses have more snow days though. I just drive them if the school is open and buses are down.

 

[2gr8DisneyKids]

I grew up in Ohio and we were allowed 3-5 snow days per year. The school district I grew up in was very large and included very rural areas as well as town. Since snow did not come as often they are not as good about dealing with it. and since roads are not cleared, it is unsafe for the buses to go and so the schools close. By law kids have to go a certain number of days per year, so once the snow days are gone and more days are taken they have to be made up by taking away individual days off or adding them to the end of the year.

Ice is also more likely in the US and even harder to deal with than snow.

My son has had one early dismissal for snow and one ice day up here.

 

[neener3]

We had two snow days last week and one the week before.

We have 5 days worked into our contract each year for snow days. Some years in the past we haven't used ANY. So we work those five days regardless. I know they're trying to do away with that because a lot of provinces don't have that built into their contracts and we don't use them all very often. Although this year it looks like we might, so the argument might be a little off!

 

[amw]

http://edu.gov.on.ca/eng/general/list/calendar/holidaye.html

It's 194 days for Ontario - but in there is days allotted for PA days. Perhaps boards take their "school closure" days out of those. Our board (York Region) did not close last week when Toronto did. Like the previous poster from Ottawa, only school buses get cancelled - schools are always open.

I know that we have PA Days slotted in at the end of June. Some years we get a letter saying we're finishing the day earlier, or half a day. That's a board decision based on whether they reached their numbers. We usually are off a day or half a day before Toronto who may take more PA Days or "snow days".

 

[chasbos]

Here in southwestern Ontario we have had 5 or 6 snow days already this school year. And the school is closed - doors are locked. Some of the high schools that have mostly town kids do leave their doors open for study purposes but elementry schools are closed.

We have had a few weeks of snow days in the past and never had to add days or have PA days taken away.

Not sure what the regulations are in Ontario.

 

[drag n' fly]

We never have snow days in Calgary. If the bus cannot come it doesn't come. We have a online bus monitor website we can check for buses running. It is CBE policy that all schools remain open no matter what the weather is. That policy stems from parents showing up before the scheduled 8:45am supervision time and dropping their kids on the playground and going home. Only to find out later by the school, police or a kind stranger that their was no school and the school was locked. Now if it happens kids have at least have a warm school to wait in till someone can fetch them home.
What we do have however is blue days. Blue days are if the it is -20c outside with or without the windchill taken into consideration kids do not wait outside until the bell rings they go directly in the school.
When I was a kid in the olden days growing up in the west country (like my kids call it lol). There could have been 5 feet of snow and 40 below you just walked to school. If you lived on the farm and the bus didn't come you just didn't go to school. There was no snow days then

 

[youngb]

At the school board I work at it is very rare for them to close the schools. Yep, buses are cancelled and it is up to parents whether they bring their kids to school. With this teachers also have the opition if they can't get to the school they work at because of roads they can report to the closet school to them and teach there for the day.

 

[dancin Disney style]

When I was a kid in the olden days growing up in the west country (like my kids call it lol). There could have been 5 feet of snow and 40 below you just walked to school. If you lived on the farm and the bus didn't come you just didn't go to school. There was no snow days then

Did you walk to school bare foot and up-hill like I did?

 

[drag n' fly]

Did you walk to school bare foot and up-hill like I did?

Not only that it was uphill both ways

Did I ever tell you the story about the time I broke my leg skiing uphill?

Or the time I caught a rainbow trout so big that when I pulled it into the boat the water level in the lake went down 2 feet?

Dont even get me started!!

 

[RainbowsMist]

At the school board I work at it is very rare for them to close the schools. Yep, buses are cancelled and it is up to parents whether they bring their kids to school. With this teachers also have the opition if they can't get to the school they work at because of roads they can report to the closet school to them and teach there for the day.

That is the MOST ridiculous thing I've ever heard of in my life!!
So they just walk into a strange school and start teaching kids and curriculum they have no idea if the kids have even covered before? How on earth is that fair to the students let alone the teachers?? I just can't wrap me head around it to be honest

I'll be blunt here...keeping schools open while buses aren't running is providing parents with free babysitting service. Not all parents put their childs well-being first. On the other end of the scale, once the next day rolls around and the full class is back how is it fair for those kids that were there on the storm day to have to sit there and listen all over again to the previous days curriculum? And how is it fair to teachers to have to teach it twice?

I live in the country and we have MAYBE 10 walkers out of the entire school! That would mean a lot of parents attempting to drive their kids on bad roads while the plows are trying to do their jobs.

Here in NS there are 195 teaching days. This was bumped up from the old 185 to account for storm days. Our school year calendar is set by the the Dept. of Education. They can never extend our school year nor can they take away "March Break" etc because of storm days. This would also break the NSTU contract and you can just imagine how that would go over!!

Over the last couple of years our Board has really been pushing the envelope sending buses out on bad roads. It's just a matter of time before something bad happens. Last year we had 2 storm days, this year we've had 3, in 2009 we had 14!

 

[Bertie9396]

The schools never close here. There have been quite a few days of bus cancellations but the schools in our area have never closed in many, many years as I can recall. The first time this year when the buses were cancelled, I took DD to school. BIG MISTAKE! The parking lot was not safe at all and IMHO the school should not have been opened. So, when they cancelled the buses last week, DH stayed home with DD. It just wasn't worth it. I'm lucky though that my husband is able to work from home sometimes.

 

[Sugar Jones]

I think my kids have had 7 snow days already this year. There school does not close, but the busses get cancelled. We live in a rural area so I do not drive my kids to school when the busses are cancelled for snow. However on fog days I will drive them in if the busses are cancelled.

 

[Ted in Halifax]

Oh ... FOG DAYS ... they haven't figured that one out here yet. I hope they don't read this ....

 

[seashoreCM]

Why cancel the buses? Aren't the kids safer in the the bus as opposed to walking in the roadway because the sidewalks are not plowed?

The buses can go slow and the school day can begin a little later.

 

[Thumper_ehhhhh]

Why cancel the buses? Aren't the kids safer in the the bus as opposed to walking in the roadway because the sidewalks are not plowed?

The buses can go slow and the school day can begin a little later.

It's not the bus drivers that are the problem on winter days. It's all the other a-holes on the road causing the problems