And here's the most popular comment:
I looked at my grandkids this morning and said - "OK, here is the deal. Get dressed for the snow, as we are hitting the park, and NO computers today or Tue. We go back to school on WED.......but today and tomorrow is fun, french fries, milk shakes, pancakes - with lots of nutella"
They screamed, and we had a blast.
They ran and ran and ran around in the snow and they were so adorable.
My daughter hugged me when she got home and saw them totally flat out exhausted, with rosy cheeks - and glowing with health.
Children need to run wild,,,,,,,,,
Plenty of time for studies and salads.
Two days of letting go - will be the good times they will remember.
Kids are not meant to be in the military..............
They just want to be loved........and protected, and loved even more.
Discipline begins at 7:30am - WED - with hot oatmeal and bananas for breakfast, and the naughty foods - shelved for another time.
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71 comments:
"Mandummy". I like that!
Disobeying the mayor? That's sedition and treason. These illegal truants need to be rounded up.
"Mandummy".
The Socialist SOB is anything but stupid. He is very canny, albeit with a sick worldview. Similar to Lenin.
Never underestimate a foe.
Resist!
Snow days are for playing in the snow, not staring at a computer all day. A certain number of snow days are budgeted in the school calendar. What did the kids sitting dutifully at their desks get for their obedience?
Howard said...
Disobeying the mayor? That's sedition and treason. These illegal truants need to be rounded up.
5 year old logic and sarcasm makes some people feel better.
When I was a kid, we didn't have snow days.
Ting!
We should be all impressed with the proper use of English by that NY Post commentator.
Howard:
That’s because you grew up in Hawaii.
Where are the warriors of the future going to come from if the kids don't get to build snow forts by digging out snowbanks, replete with stockpiles of snowballs for defense, and instead are locked inside getting a moon tan from their computer screens?
Yes, snow days are budgeted into the school calendar, but after the allotment is used up, which it sometimes is, the days get added to the end of the calendar, shortening the summer vacation. So even if not all kids can attend, holding school by remote potentially saves a summer vacation day.
Here’s a bit of larceny that I love: “In fact, several parents logged in for the morning, then took the kids out to sled after lunch. If they have good attendance records, does it really matter?”
One of the most important things you learn in school is that you don’t always have to do the things that the authorities tell you you have to do.
When I was in high school, our family would take a week off from school to go skiing in Colorado. It was an 11 to 12 hour bus ride, not worth going for a weekend. Those were snow days.
Not to mention that kids could make real money with their parents' snow shovels doing clean up that helped the community.
Yeah, sometimes in the '60s in New York State the snow days would eat into summer vacation if my childhood memories can be trusted, and it was worth it.
Shorter NY Post: Some New Yorkers went outside to embrace the frigidity of rugged individualism while others remained inside, logged into the warmth of collectivism.
Let's be honest.
It was 20 degrees yesterday. They screwed around outside for about a half-hour. They goofed around in the kitchen for about an hour. What did they do for the other 6 hours?
Remote learning is a poor substitute, and ineffective for young children. Mamdani made the announcement knowing it was pointless.
There is plenty of ground in between. Learning does not have to be a boring chore, but that takes some creativity and effort.
Building a spaghetti tower or shooting a clever video or some other enrichment activity isn't as whimsical as making pancakes and milkshakes.
We used to pull our kids out for day trips to the small but fun ski mountain about 45 minutes from us in PA whenever conditions warranted it (particularly when there was a big snow early in the week that would be all smooshed down by the weekend). Several times over the years we pulled them out on standardized-test days, when the test wasn't going to do anything to or for them , but was just required by the state to assess the school itself. We knew our kids could read and do math.
Such a tremendous day! The grandkids even got to build a snowperson!
Snow days as a child are a great memory. I remember getting up very early on snowy days and listening to the radio hoping to hear that my school was one of the ones closed. Which meant a day of playing in the snow with my friends in the neighborhood. I lived on a Cul-de-Sac and the various factions would build up their forts and snowball stockpiles and then have at it. Though there were sometimes incongruencies where the other kids in my neighborhood would get a snow day but I would not because they went to public school and I went to a parochial school.
“Snowperson”? Reminds me of an old joke: What’s the difference between a snowman and a snowlady? Snowballs!
@Kevin @ 7:14
That is a good post.
I always learned more on a snow day than I did from a day in school.
Yah! Make snow days great again! Snow days weren't that bad as long as you didn't lose your power.
Nutella on pancakes? I like both but never considered the combo…
When I was a kid, full snow days were rare. But I went to urban schools. Often we usually got a light dusting with no school delays where rural districts would be snowed in and closed. Or if we did get more snow, we had capable city services back then that would get it removed.
The local radio where I lived always read off the public school closings before they finally got to the parochial schools (Catholic and Lutheran). The wait for us mackerel snappers was excruciating.
I recall my parents pulling us out of school for a few days a year for a winter vacation. It didn't seem to be a big deal, and we didn't miss much.
In the 90s, we tried pulling our kids out for ONE day to do something similar. We were threatened with all kinds of legal action.
My kids caught a cold that day, and didn't go to school.
KFAB did the school closings. Walt Kavanaugh would read them. Omaha Catholic and public schools were always together. KFAB has a big signal so it would cover much of the state. It was how I learned the names of Nebraska towns: Wahoo, Wiber, Rosalie, Pender, West Point, etc.
We rarely had snow days when I was a kid living in a close suburb of Chicago. And in elementary school and junior high we had to walk...My junior high was over a mile from my house.
The only snow days I remember, and I think it was a whole week or so, was the Big Snow of 1967 when we go 23" of snow in 24 hours.
I can clearly remember listening intently to the radio to hear if my school or school district was closing. When it did, it felt like FREEDOM!
"School called and asked why one of my children have not logged on."
None of your fucking business, I replied. And hung up.
When I was about 11 to 14, early '60s, snow days were a big moneymaker for me -- shovelling people's driveways, walkways, mailboxes, fire hydrants, clotheslines, etc. 10 bucks up to 6 inches, or 15 for deeper [100 or 150 in today's money]. Informal contract. All the old people, I did for free, and my whole corner of the small town knew that, which is why they were willing to pay me so well.
We were threatened with all kinds of legal action.
School funding is now based on a set rate per student per day attended. If your kid isn’t in attendance, the school loses money. And they want their money.
They now equate truancy with theft.
I don't know if I've been as happy as waking up to the radio announcing "NO SCHOOL!" I liked school, but it was a call to arms to go out and have fun, like it was something you never did.
Plenty of snow days at my rural Iowa school until the state started counting partial days towards the total needed to complete the school year, then we had lots of early dismissals unless the blizzard was in full swing in the AM and the busses couldn't get out.
Blizzards and even just cold and snow are no joke. When I was in junior high we had an early dismissal (IIRC) where a teacher who lived in a little rental house in the country not far from our farm stayed behind at school. He thought he would be able to walk the roughly mile and a half from the school to the house. He grew up in a Mississippi River valley town in southeast Minnesota so he wasn't familiar with blizzards in open country. He made it ok until he had to walk a short distance south perpendicular to the west wind to reach his house and was blown off course. The only thing that saved him was walking into a small ravine beyond his house where he was able to find some shelter. He survived a bit over 24 hours in the blizzard before he was found.
A yes, shoveling snow. My introduction to the thrill and value of capitalism. At home the job was strictly controlled by communists.
Curious George wrote: The only snow days I remember, and I think it was a whole week or so, was the Big Snow of 1967 when we go 23" of snow in 24 hours.
I vividly remember that week. I made a small fortune digging out cars on Howard Street and Sheridan Road. I was 13 and in good shape.
Most cars were rear wheel drive in those days and easily got stuck in the snow.
For kids, it was a great week with Chicago basically paralyzed by the unanticipated snowstorm. They were sledding down Sheridan Road.
No, Dave. RESIST!!!
Hell, if the kids’ teachers belong to Weingarten’s teachers’ union they’re doing learning despite the teacher anyway.
The blizzard of 1978 in Ohio is one of my fondest memories. It was way too deep to go out and play in the snow, but I remember snuggling up in a warm blanket and reading books all day long for about a week until school re-opened.
In Montgomery County, Maryland, the Catholic schools aligned with the public schools and the public schools with Loudoun County. That county was way out near mountains and always got a lot of snow when there was any snow. When we heard "Loudoun County schools are closed," it was FREEDOM.
Now Loudoun is filled with progresso-schizo minorities who want their children well-educated and want their children's schools to enforce DEI and trans rights.
We lived in Alexandria, Virginia during the blizzard of ‘66. I was just a tyke, but I remember being fascinated by the snow and the drifts being above my head. That’s the only big snow I’ve experienced, other than the 1/16” of an inch yesterday. :)
"School called and asked why one of my children have not logged on."
Well, the jerk store called and said why did you elect a Communist to be mayor of NYC!
we don't have sno days down here either.
But we do have hurricane months.
And sno cones
John Henry
Nutella on everything, Beasts. Pancakes, grilled cheese, Tuna salad, mashed potatoes, tacos, straight out of the jar by the spoonful ...
Next step,
Police close the parks and cite parents grandparents with kids for not being home online.
John Henry
Lived in DC for a few years as a young child, snow was mostly dusting, or wet. One year we had two snow days, it was a blast. After that, we lived in Palm Springs, and could take the Tramway to visit the snow, and then come home.
If they have good attendance records, does it really matter?”
Nope, not at all. The school gets paid for attendance. It gets nothing at all for learning.
So yes, they need to log on so the school can get that sweet learing money.
John Henry
Legal requirements for a particular number of days of school per year drives a lot of absurdity, as if the hours of time in a classroom or on a conference call directly translate to educational outcome. In my former town, students sometimes ended up being required go to school for several days after final exams had been completed. There is a 25-26 day difference between the state with the highest number of required days of school (Illinois - 185 in 2023, Kansas - 186 in 2018) and the lowest (Colorado - 160). That translates to five more weeks of school in Chicago than in Colorado. I'm sure those weeks are well spent.
Curious George wrote: The only snow days I remember, and I think it was a whole week or so, was the Big Snow of 1967 when we go 23" of snow in 24 hours.
We got that overnight Sunday into Monday, one son's work has been cancelled the last two days because there still is nowhere to park.
’Nutella on everything, Beasts. Pancakes, grilled cheese, Tuna salad, mashed potatoes, tacos, straight out of the jar by the spoonful ...’
I may have to discount your comments in the future. ;)
We lived in Alexandria, Virginia during the blizzard of ‘66
We left Seminary Valley in summer of '65 for Newport RI, then Charleston SC, Long Beach, and back in Dec '69 to Seminary Hill, where the sledding was better.
Charleston had a dusting of snow overnight, they closed the schools, and it melted by 10 am. I remember only one snow our winter in Newport.
When I lived in Illinois, I would add a few things to my trunk in winter; a coal shovel (a regular snow shovel would bend and curl up before it would get through any ice on the pavement), a couple of bags of sand and a couple of burlap bags. The bags of sand were placed over the rear wheels for added weight. If needed you could spread some of the sand under the tires for extra traction. The burlap bags were a quick way to add traction under the rear tires. It wasn't unusual for someone to slip and slide into a snowbank on the side of the road and not be able to get out.
That was 40 years ago. 20 years before that people would put chains on their tires. I have no idea if anyone still does that.
Snow days were very special to our kids growing up. My gut reaction to the insistence that snowed in students log into remote learning is that the schools are 100% focused on the Federal ADA reimbursement and nothing else.
"Just log on. We don't care if you do no work."
We all learned in 2020 that 99% of "remote learning" was as productive as "remote work" for Federal Employees. It's all about the money, not the learing.
That'll teach me to jump in late. John Henry already said it.
Holy hell, the Post's website is awful. All of the major outlets are like that now. You click into an article and expect to get the pop-up about becominig a subscriber...okay, no problem...but then there's about an inch of actual article for every ten inches of OTHER crap. Autorunning (and very distracting) videos you can't stop, nav bars on all four corners squeezing the content you're trying to read down into a singularity, and as you scroll...and you have to because they have sooooo much white space in the article itself...you get maybe a paragraph (if it can even be called thus) before hitting a parallax-style horizontal nav bar full of more links.
Awful.
I grew up in a north suburb of Chicago. During the Ice Storm of 1963 we could ice skate on the streets. Parts of Mississippi got an inch of ice this time but I doubt many kids owned ice skates.
Our town used front-end loaders during big named and unnamed snowfalls to pile it up into "mountains" which you could tunnel into or use as high ground for snowball fights.
As an adult, living in a South Side Mexican neighborhood during the Bilandic storm, we used to go around trying to help newbies move their cars when they had gotten themselves stuck by spinning their tires. We always had a six pack with us for immediate fortification. Many we had to give up on because we couldn't get them to understand the rocking back and forth technique.
...give up on many...
Beasts, we seldom keep Nutella in the house for just that reason. I actually don't eat it on much of anything. The spoon seldom survives the trip from jar to food. It always detours to my mouth.
When we do get a jar, for the grandkids, it seldom lasts more than an hour or so.
I've been looking for a way to thin it down so I can mainline it straight to my veins.
John Henry
Old Forge NY is the coldest place in the US once or twice every winter. I grew up about 40 miles away. Brutal winters, right on Lake George with the wind funneling down Lakes Champlain and George from the coldest part of Canada.
But I never knew what cold was until I spent the winter of 67 in Great Lakes, about 40 miles north of Chicago. I would wear double thermal underwear, navy wool pants, wool jumper, heavy pea coat and when that wind came whistling through, I might as well have been naked.
It being the navy, we had to stand watches, even if there was nothing useful to watch. Like on a dumpster, from 11:45 to 3:45, 2-3 nights a week, walking around in a parking lot with nothing blocking the wind.
John Henry
I think we had a five day allotment every year for snow days when I was a kid. They were rarely used except in cases when it was a combo of high winds, heavy snow and ice. The perfect combo for losing power. My father was a lineman, and his utility covered much of northern Vermont, which often meant climbing poles deep in the woods in difficult places. If the phone rang in the middle of the night it was a foregone conclusion there would be no school. I always hated the thought of him having to leave a warm bed to head out into the teeth of the storm, and knowing we would not see him for a day or more.
I grew up in Southern California. Snow day? What's that?
"John henry said...
Nutella on everything, Beasts. Pancakes, grilled cheese, Tuna salad, mashed potatoes, tacos, straight out of the jar by the spoonful ..."
You forgot the "R"
20 degrees is no big deal if you have the right clothes. One of the joys living in NYC is getting out into the park after a snowstorm. Totally in favor of just ignoring the remote edict. Get those kids outside. Get yourself outside if work allows.
Snow day? Coddled collectivism produces a weaker subject.
You guys sure making cold and snow sound like fun. Kinda reminds me of something.
Oh, yeah:
Synopsis of "Moose Turd Pie"
The song is a humorous spoken-word tall tale about a group of workers building a railroad line through the desert.
The Conflict: The crew is miserable and hates the food provided by their cook. According to "camp law," the only way to get a new cook is for someone to complain about the food; however, the person who complains is then forced to become the new cook themselves.
The Strategy: One worker decides to test this law by finding a dried piece of "moose turd" in the desert and baking it into a pie to serve to his fellow workers, hoping to force a complaint.
The Punchline: A worker takes a big bite of the pie, realizes what it is, and instinctively shouts, "My God, this is moose turd pie!" Remembering the law immediately, he quickly adds, "But it's good! It's good!"
We used coal shovels, because those were still a thing, you know, for actual coal.
I'm from Cleveland. Couple of short blocks from Lake Erie (still on the lake, now in retirement in Lorain, OH.)
Only ONE DAY in all my school years they had even a snow delay - two hours. And I remember 5th grade when the temps hit -18 - and we still had to go to school. It was 50 degrees below,FREEZING!
I am guessing children prefer the cold individualism of playing in the snow to the warm collectivism of online learing.
I was in the 6th grade during the winter of 1977-78. We went on Christmas break about a week before Christmas and didn't go back to school until mid February. Of course, we ended up going to school until mid June rather than the usual summer vacation start the week around Memorial Day but it was worth it- we went sledding just about every single day during that amazing winter and I spent the nights into the early morning reading science fiction novels.
NYC schools used to have a few snow days in the schedule, but used them to add religious holidays. I think schools should give students access to a classic kid-appropriate movie and call that remote learning. They might actually watch it.
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