Illustration by Ali Mac
illustration of a snowman with a backpack
For entire generations of Minnesota kids, the morning following a snowstorm was a time when the radio took center stage. In the ’70s and ’80s, pajama-clad youths cozied up by their parents’ kitchen radio and waited with bated breath as WCCO 830’s Roger Erickson dutifully read through the list of school closings and delayed starts. Would theirs be—could theirs be!—among the glorious handful that declared that day a snow day?
In the digital era, the announcements now come via text, robocall, and email, but they provoke the same jump-on-your-sled excitement. These unexpected days off school have meant epic snow forts and snowball fights, shoveling strangers’ cars out of drifts, skiing in the streets, and mugs of hot chocolate to thaw cold kids.
Or at least, they did. Traditional snow days are under threat as more districts turn to e-learning days when buildings close, thanks to a 2017 bill that allowed it and an increased capacity for technology-based learning due to the pandemic. An Education Week survey from November 2020 found that 39 percent of school leaders converted snow days to e-learning days, and another 32 percent said they were considering it. That includes many districts in Minnesota. But St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS), for example, has built three e-learning days into its calendar.
“We’re reminding students and staff to take their devices home beginning next week,” SPPS spokesman Kevin Burns said in early October.
With so many learning hours lost during the 2019–2020 school year, districts are eager to make up for lost time. Even districts that haven’t applied for e-learning accreditation may expect kids to do more schoolwork and less sledding if school is cancelled. If a snowstorm hit tomorrow, “it’s likely that 6th–12th graders would take their technology home so they could be asynchronous,” says David Law, superintendent of Anoka-Hennepin school district, pointing out that the calculus is different for older students. If you only have 110 days of German before testing for proficiency, he says, “every day counts.”
And really, Burns says, even though he fondly recalls shoveling his neighbor Mrs. Bruce’s sidewalks as a kid in St. Paul with mittens strung through his jacket, “it was far more physically exerting and no more restful than going to school.”
But could it be that climbing snowbanks onto the roof of your school and jumping into the drifts or having an impromptu block party with benches carved out of snow is more valuable than e-learning?
“On one hand, burnout and stress are at an all-time high as a result of the pandemic,” says University of Minnesota associate professor of school psychology Faith Miller. About half of Americans don’t feel like they have enough time to do everything they want to. “Snow days provide that opportunity, that possibility for obligations to be temporarily abandoned. This type of discretionary time is linked to happiness and life satisfaction.”
And some research shows that the surprise nature of snow days is part of their magic: A 2016 study found that people tend to appreciate spontaneous breaks most.
But, Miller continues, the issue is far from black and white. Equity is a big concern, for example, and there isn’t a solution that solves all the equity issues. “We have had tremendous loss of instructional time and subsequent learning loss as well,” she says. “Issues of inequity have become exacerbated in the wake of the pandemic, and the digital divide is a major issue—not everyone has access to remote instruction, and often those in greater positions of privilege can more readily adapt to make remote instruction work, leaving others in less privileged positions behind.”
Of course, the premise of any sort of cancelled day is the weather that precipitates it. Belinda Jensen, chief meteorologist at KARE 11, gets asked the question whenever flurries are in the forecast: “C’mon, is there going to be a snow day?” Most of the time, the answer is no. Prime conditions for a snow day usually include wind that can whip snow up into a blizzard and make driving precarious, she notes—and that happens most often in the open plains of southwest Minnesota.
The jury is out on how climate change may affect snow days, she adds, although the frequencies of three-inch-or-greater snowfalls in the metro in climatologist/meteorologist Mark Seeley’s lifetime has increased, he says. There is some scant evidence that more winter precipitation in the southern half of the state could fall as rain rather than snow, he says.
Though both Jensen and Seeley can confirm that, scientifically, flushing three ice cubes down the toilet has no bearing on whether a snow day will be called, elementary teachers report incorporating snow day superstitions into the school day when storms are on the way. Many swear that wearing pajamas inside out and backward, freezing a white crayon and sleeping with it under your pillow, or jumping around in said PJs in a snow-dance frenzy can conjure one.
Of course, harried parents who have to scramble to find childcare on snow days might be countering those superstitions. Superintendents know well that they face a lose-lose decision in the eyes of parents. Save for the day in 2014 when Governor Dayton ordered all schools in the state closed for cold, superintendents are the ones ordering the robocalls, often after days of briefings from the National Weather Service and consultation with transportation directors, facilities supervisors, and nearby school districts.
“Safety is always on the forefront,” explains Kevin Grover, superintendent of International Falls School District. Though snow days are pretty rare in the Icebox of the Nation—thanks in equal parts to a smaller footprint than most rural districts, heated garages for buses, and general northern Minnesota hardiness—he thinks e-learning may become “more of an option” in his tenure. Still, e-learning doesn’t meet food and day care needs, he points out. “For a good chunk of our kids, this is the best place to be.”
Superintendent Law of Anoka-Hennepin agrees. “Just because kids can’t come to school doesn’t mean parents are home to support them,” he says. “Parents are very rarely complaining about lost learning; it’s last-minute scrambling for childcare. That doesn’t get solved with e-learning. And one in three of our community members relies on us for meals.”
Needless to say, their inboxes are usually full after snowstorms, no matter which way they call it. (And often parents who do want school closed do not want to cancel hockey practice, Law notes.)
While the future of weather-related closures for snow and cold remain in question, all may not be lost for those who wear their pajamas inside out and backward: weather-related closures are likely to become more of a concern for heat. In fact, with the uptick in frequency of heat episodes in April, May, and September, Seeley says schools should plan on closures for buildings that don’t have air-conditioning.
“It would be wise of school districts to have an e-learning option, and even wiser to plan on climate change to impact outdoor athletic events,” he says.
Another ray of hope for snow day lovers, according to Seeley, is that blizzards can knock out power—and how would you do e-learning with no power?
“We have this wonderful history here,” he says. “I’ve traveled the world and the nation, and everywhere, people say, ‘Oh, you people in Minnesota must be so resilient to go from 60 to 110.’ We have a national and international reputation, and we’re going to have to have it more amplified in the future with what our extremes can do.”
