Imagine you wake up on a Monday morning ready to go to school, and you look out the window to see a clean white sheet of snow on the ground. A snow day! You reach over for your phone to discover that school is closed. One of the best feelings. However, a proposed plan for virtual inclement weather days for Harford County Public Schools during the 2023–2024 school year has been authorized by the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE).
At the Board of Education sessions on December 18, 2023, and January 8, 2024, HCPS presented the proposed plan. The plan to use up to 3 asynchronous days, in case of bad weather during the 2023–2024 school year, was approved by the Harford County Board of Education. This will enable asynchronous virtual instruction for the inclement weather days that we still have.
How many days students must attend school is a decision that can be made by any state. In Maryland, there are 180 days in a year, granting an additional three virtual days of instruction before the summer shortens. Three days may seem like a long time, yet it may be easily filled. Large storms keep coming, leaving the school board with little choice except to shorten summer and occasionally spring break. In 2018 an article titled “Montgomery County is Out of Snow Days – Is Your County” Stephanie Ramirez said, “An MCPS Spokesperson tells WUSA 9 if they close for snow on Wednesday, the next make-up day will be June 5th. They’ll work their way back into the calendar and even look at their Spring Break if need be.”
Now this might be good or bad news for some people. Most likely for seniors this might be a bad thing because inclement weather days won’t change their graduation date, therefore this could be disappointing for them as they will still have to do schoolwork on these days. But virtual snow days will ensure that summer lasts as long as possible, while allowing students’ continued education. But snow days have a significant disadvantage: they lengthen the school year and take away from summer vacation.
In my opinion, it makes sense for students to attend online classes on their days off since it will extend their summer vacation and give them ten days to finish their assignments after the day they are assigned to virtual instruction. Therefore, we will have more than enough time to finish the four short assignments for a single snow day. Additionally, it will only be a little assignment from each lesson you take that day rather than a Zoom class or anything else.
