How come paperboys can deliver newspapers in the snow but postmen cannot deliver the mail?
How come every worker in the city can manage to get into their place of employment (some of them travelling over 50 miles to do so) except teachers who find it absolutely impossible to get to work even if the school is next door to where they live?
These are weighty questions.
In regards to the first, it must be regional. We do not have that quandary in the States – at least not in my region, and we certainly have had times when it would have been most understandable for the mail to not ‘get through.”
In regards to the latter, well, I’m sure that the safety of the children is paramount.
Because the schools are closed all the children are out in the streets trying to kill themselves (as they have always done) on slides they have fashioned out of the ice. Health and safety, my arse!
In the US, it’s really a knock on effect of the school bus drivers having problems (after all they are out with the snowplow folks) getting in. Once the school bus folks are behind schedule, everything is off schedule. It’s easier to try again the next day.
Or…
The liability attached to driving the “lil’ darlins'” is avoided altogatther. Safer to wait until all the roads are clear.
You are, as always, correct (I’m the sycophant!). But I pity the poor soul who never has had the opportunity as a child to wake up on a snowy day and learn school has been canceled. O joyous taste of heavenly life yet to come!
This is inscribed on a US Postal Service building in NYC;
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
Some think it the motto of the USPS, but officially it is not. It was, however, the motto of postal couriers of the Persian empire in 500 BC, from whence this poetic translated statement comes
Yes, MP, but it rids the school of any liability. With school closed parents and kids have full responsibility.
Our postal service folks deliver snow or not and this close to the great lakes we get plenty. School bus liability and teacher commutes are why they close schools here.
FWIW
jimB
Because the schools are closed all the children are out in the streets trying to kill themselves (as they have always done) on slides they have fashioned out of the ice. Health and safety, my arse!
Well, I suppose it depends upon where you are. My buddy Chris Mills, of Halesowen, was selflessly acting as an embedded reporter last winter, and he described his area as a snowy war zone – one ventured out of one’s house strictly at one’s own risk. For all the snow that had fallen, apparently Halesowen had turned into a wintry “hot zone.”
I pity the poor soul who never has had the opportunity as a child to wake up on a snowy day and learn school has been canceled. O joyous taste of heavenly life yet to come!
Ten thousand AMENS to that!
Here in FL, on occasion, the kids get “hurricane days.” Not the same at all.
Not the same at all.
Especially since a lot of the active part of the season is during the summer and they are out of school, many of them, anyway.
•••
wv = mister
English for Señor!
Also, in the States, schools tend to receive their funding according to average attendance. School systems lose money when low attendance brings that average down. Even if the schools did not close, many parents would keep their children at home when there’s a lot of snow or icy conditions.
Delighted to report that not one of my teaching team has gone AWOL in the adverse conditions.
You’re still on target for an attendance prize at the end of the school year, then? We used to get a 5 shilling book token at South End Junior School.
The prize is keeping your pay packet. You don’t turn in, you don’t get paid.
PoO has it: in Canada too “snow days” have to do with bussing rather than teachers, who do in fact turn up to “teach” (really, babysit) the rump of unfortunate kids not served by the buses and with inflexible parents (or group home administrators in our case) who forced us to attend classes consisting of Adam Sandler movies on some half-baked principle.