Something Has To Be Done, Snow Doubt About It

Once again school is canceled due to bad weather. It's a mess out there. Snow, ice and slush are the rule. One rule they don't have to teach in class. "Water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink!", that is unless you'd like a slushy.

It's not like it's a surprise this is New England, land of the "Nor'easter". Weather is not the only problem facing us. Blowing in our face like a cold arctic blast from the north are the waves of MCAS scores, our schools' thermometer for educational achievement. Our students need to be in school, learning.  What can we do? They say you can't fight Mother Nature.

I don't think it is in the school budget to move the entire Lynn Public School system to a warmer climate so must we learn to accept a sub-standard educational system?  The weather is certainly a variable in our ability to provide a quality education to our children.

The question then is what kind of  is it: fixed or variable? The answer is both really. It is fixed in that we know we are going to have bad weather sometime during these months, we just don't know exactly when. The way it is now we worship at the feet of meteorological idols and offer snow days as sacrifices to appease the weather gods.

Our schools need a new religion to get a better forecast. The answer lies where our problem begins: in the calender. Well, not exactly. That is because here are two separate calenders, the meteorological one and the school one. These two don't mesh.

Since we can't change the seasons, not accounting for global warming, we must look at changes in the school calender to provide solutions for our wintry dilemma. There must be changes that can be made to it to maximize the amount of instruction time while reducing the inconsistency in instruction due to the unpredictability of the weather.

I would love to trot out my own version of a new school calender so I could take credit for solving all of Lynn's curriculum problems. However I am not smart enough to produce some computer generated model, complete with all kinds of statistical analysis. I'm just a volunteer librarian who checks out kids' book.