STAFF EDITORIAL: Snow days should stay snow days
December 6, 2019
It is usually exciting to find out that your school is closed for a snow day.
Students anticipate being able to sleep in, having an extra day to get their homework done or just being able to lay around the house and be lazy.
This is how a normal snow day usually is, but now schools have come up with the idea to have online classes during snow days.
According to an article last year by PIX 11, Anderson School District 5 in South Carolina elected to replace snow days with online classes.
The district started using an eLearning pilot program which lets students access assignments at home using Google Classroom with Chromebook devices.
Apparently, there is no Internet connectivity required for the assignments, as they can be downloaded ahead of time.
We at The Daily Eastern News oppose the idea of schools replacing snow days with online classes.
Although students have the ability to download their assignments ahead of time before the actual snow day, what if a snow day takes place when it is unexpected and the assignments are not downloaded by then?
If this happens, students won’t be able to access their assignments most likely.
Some students do not have WiFi at their home, and what if a snow day means there is a snow storm so bad that power outages occur?
We find the idea of online classes during snow days to be absolutely preposterous, and we think that regardless of the obvious reasons, students should be able to have a break.
Although snow days are not planned, we believe that if they happen then students should be able to take advantage of them.
Also, we believe that if teachers get the day off, students should have this perk as well.
It also seems to be too much work to provide online classes and assignments during snow days, and although it seems that the school district has everything set in motion, we believe there are chances that things would not go as planned.
There are times when schools have snow days, and although it can be inconvenient for teachers who have their lessons planned and they end up being pushed back because of snow days, it just happens.
For decades, there has never been a snow day that was replaced with online classes, and that is because a snow day is a snow day.
We cannot control the weather, but we shouldn’t try to work our way around it either.
Let’s just leave snow days the way they are, and allow students the perks of sleeping in and enjoying a day off from the daily grind of studies.
The Editorial Staff can be reached at 581-2812 or at dennewsdesk@eiu.edu.