Well, another Louisville fiasco with letting schools out early because we MIGHT get just a sprinkling of snow. When I was young (save the groans for another time) I remember walking to school almost up to my knees. This isn’t a ‘pre-depression’ story of a country school. I’m talking about in the 1960’s, and schools in Louisville. For us to get a ‘snow day’ there had to be a LOT of snow on the ground. Now, if the news just ‘mentions’ snow, everyone starts freaking out and wanting to send the kids home early or cancel altogether.
I went for a run late yesterday afternoon (was about 2 miles from home when the cold front came through) and got a chuckle out of seeing the young ones trying to ride their sleds down the driveways and roads, with the small amount of accumulation we received. You could hear the runners scraping on the concrete and asphalt, but these folks wanted to RIDE.
Maybe if we would concentrate more on WHAT our young people are learning while they are IN school, and quit worrying so much about looking for any excuse to send them home early, we might start moving back to a time when the testing scores were higher, the drop-out rate was lower, and the success rate for high school graduates was in the upper quadrant.
