Tagged: snow days
‘Fraidy cat province: Strait-Richmond edition
The Strait-Richmond Regional School Board cancelled classes in all schools today. Apparently there’s a wicked storm underway.
Thank God the children are safe. Not to mention the teachers and board administrators, union members all, right up to the superintendent.
To be fair, there is snow visible in half of these highway cam images from the school board’s catchment area, just none on the actual roads beings monitored. In case you missed Jim Meek’s column on this subject in Saturday’s Herald, you can find it here. Said Meek:
My idea of hell is [CBC weather dude Peter] Coade broadcasting the weather forecast in an endless loop on TV, which is pretty well what CBC Nova Scotia passes off as news these days. (Just add in crime, and you’ve got the formula.)
It’s not that I have anything against Coade, a good man stuck in an assembly line job. It’s just that we have now endured months of warnings about weather bombs that never exploded; slippery roads that didn’t materialize; and storm forecasts that yielded to sunny days.
What will it take to restore some common sense to these decisions?
The snow day debate continues
Too damned many.
In response to my note about the 40-something Norwegian who had never seen a snow day until he came to Nova Scotia, Contrarian reader Joyce Rankin of Mabou Westmount blames consolidation of schools and secularization of society for the proliferation of snow days. Her response sparked a lively email debate.
I remember we never used to have snow days either. But then again, we were close enough to school that we could walk.
The questions to ask, for a proper comparison, would be how far children in Norway travel to school, and how far people drive to work, and over what kind of roads? And if there’s not an official snow day, does that mean that everyone shows up? Or does it mean that those who can make it come and the place functions (or not) with a skeleton crew, accomplishing little.
You can drive in this.
All valid points. But it could also be there that Norwegians are just a little less timid about driving when there is half an inch of snow? We do have snow tires after all. This implies that driving on snow is something we do.
Why doesn’t Alberta have snow days? We have too many damn snow days. I hear it from everyone.
It’s not so much snow that’s the problem, but rather ice. In Alberta it tends to get cold and stay cold, and it is not as wet. Not so much temperature fluctuation and hence less ice. Plus in areas where it’s flatter and the roads are straighter, the driving is easier. (Note that the accident often happen at curves and hills.)
I’m not disagreeing that it gets a bit silly sometimes. But the school board is to blame, too, because the new procedure is for the board superintendent to make the call for the whole district, rather than the principal making it for each school. I guess they haven’t noticed the variation in weather from, say, Ingonish to Sydney River to Louisbourg, or from Pleasant Bay to Louisdale to Canso to Antigonish.
Plus it’s because of liability. Administration is afraid that someone will get hurt and they’ll get sued for making them come to work.
Birds do it. Squirrels do it. Even bright yellow buses do it.
I take your point about one-size fits all in boards that stretch over a huge territory. But I think the issue shows a problem with the way society handles small risks of terrible outcomes. We place policy makers in an invidious position. They might be criticized for over caution, but they would be savaged if a child is injured or killed. But life is not risk free.
This issue also dovetails with another bugaboo of mine: the fact that too many school system managers, up to and including superintendents, are in the teachers’ union. Unions should not be given the task of deciding when a day off is appropriate.
The bottom line is that we have far too many snow days in NS. We have snow days where there is barely any snow. We have snow days on days we would not have given a second thought 15 years ago. It has crept up on us, and it has gone too far.
I have driven long distances on bad roads to work, and I have worked in places where there’s a lot of pressure to be at work no matter what (and where you don’t get paid if you don’t come in).
It would be interesting to compare accident stats –was there a larger percentage of serious accidents and fatalities when people were more willing to drive on icy roads? I’m guessing yes.
Some wintry jurisdictions keep on bussin'.
While you’re at it, compare snow-day attendance at Nova Scotia ski hills compared to weekdays when schools remain open.
I think one of the results of secularization is that people value themselves and their physical well-being more than they used to. We expect to have control over our lives. We have less of the kind of humility that a) leaves it up to God or to fate, and b) views oneself as only one of many. We have learned to expect that we should be taken care of and insulated from risk. Most workplaces are much safer than they used to be, fewer people work outdoors, and there’s less call to be tough and resilient. (Which probably explains the rise of extreme sports -these are the people who in another century would have gone to sea or been a trapper or something.)
We expect things to be okay, we see it as an entitlement. And when something does go wrong, we want to blame it on someone. People in administration know this, and they don’t want to be the one blamed.
The giftie gie us
I met a Norwegian immigrant last night, a man in his 40s. He has lived in Nova Scotia for four years. At one point, the conversation turned to snow days.
“You know,” he said, “in 40 years in Norway, I never saw one snow day. Not from school. Not from work.”
Four years in Nova Scotia, and he’s seen about 40.
Just saying’.
Blaming unions
Saint Mary’s professor Larry Haiven thinks blaming unions for unnecessary snow days is silly:
This is part of a syndrome of “if in doubt, blame the unions.” So convenient. So wrong.
A few years ago I was taking a tour of the new Toronto opera house. We were allowed to go everywhere except on stage, even though the stage was bare, with no current production going on.
One of the tour members asked the docent why we couldn’t go on stage. The tour member said he had been on tours of all the great opera houses of Europe and had never been barred from the stage. The docent looked serious and said “union rules.” All of the tour members (except me) nodded their heads sagely in rueful agreement.
It just so happened that I had an interview with the head of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (the stagehands’ union) on another matter later that day. So I asked him if this were true. He got very angry and told me that there was no union rule, no union prohibition and, in fact, the union was very much in favour of tours visiting the stage when there was no production going on. He said that “union rules” have become a pernicious legend in his field. I later phoned the management of the opera house to complain about the docent’s mistake.
What I found most interesting was not the docent’s duplicity but the tour group’s acceptance of it. As a former union staffer and a person who researches and teaches about unions, I’m amazed at the difference between the real power that they actually lack and the perceived power people think they have.
As I said before, I regret making the union issue part of this discussion, because it permits people like Larry to wrap themselves in solidarity’s flag and ignore the core issues:
- In the management of risk, our society increasingly allows knee-jerk caution to trump common sense, and important social values like child-rearing suffer as a consequence.
- After their sub-par performance during Hurricane Juan was criticized, Environment Canada and the CBC began to over-hype forecasts of routine weather. Ironically, this monomaniacal focus on safety has created a very unsafe situation.
- Senior managers in our school system either belong, or kinda-sorta belong, to the teachers’ union. The apparent willingness of class-struggle buffs like Larry to countenance this absurdity is astounding.
- We have far too many snow days, and the ones we have apply to far too wide an area.
I honestly don’t know whether point three plays any major role in point four, but it ought to be changed anyway. No one above the level of small-school teaching principals ought to belong to the Teacher’s Union, and the law should be changed to reflect this.
As for the accelerating trend toward a New Jerusalem of ‘fraidy cats, Contrarian will continue to rail.
Snow days – another view
Educational consultant Paul W. Bennett, a former principal of Halifax Grammar School, thinks we should not be too quick to dismiss the connection between unsnowy snow days and the provisions of the teachers’ collective agreement.
[T]he key factor [in school closures] is the collective agreement which has been in place in Nova Scotia since the mid-1970s. In that sense, the Education Department is just as culpable as the NSTU.
The teachers’ agreement originally included an understanding that about five days a year would be written off as “throw-away” snow days. The Agreement with the NSTU also stipulates that if buses are cancelled and schools closed to students, then teachers do not have to report for duty. This is very unusual and has been eliminated in most other provinces.
What’s the impact? No one in NS worries if four or five days are lost each year. The problem only surfaced when school boards canelled from eight to 14 full days last school year. Then it became apparent to everyone that there was no provising for reclaiming lost days, or any real policy to contain or even limit cancellations.
I am just completing a major comparative study of school storm days, demonstrating conclusively that Maritimers are the biggest “fraidy cats” of them all. It also shows that Maritimers are the outliers when it comes to protecting valuable teaching-learning time and that this is a major factor contributing to our chronic “below Canadian average” student performance results.
Dept. of Amplification & Correction: School closures
Several readers have questioned, taken issue with, and even canceled subscriptions (!) over my criticism of overly cautious school closures, particularly my suggestion that union sympathies may play a role in unwarranted snow days.
Since when are school administrators (who make decisions about snow days) part of the teachers’ union? [TB]
Snow days are decided upon by the School Board. The teachers and their union have nothing to do with it. Teachers have to show up on snow days to babysit any kids dropped off by parents. The fact that you are so silly as to blame Unions—good heavens how silly!—I have now figured you out: Another Conservative who will blame the victims for all the country’s ills. [AMcG]
At least in HRSB, the school officials who make the call are school board Superintendents – not unionized, but management. [AB]
Another possible explanation is the requirement to please big, risk-averse insurance companies. [BW]
OK, so now I’ve done what I should have done before posting, checked with Peter McLaughlin, my ex-Daily News colleague who now speaks for the Nova Scotia Department of Education. Turns out the situation is at once more complicated than I suggested, and less clearcut than my interlocutors believe. Full explanation after the jump.
A nation of ‘fraidy cats?
This is what a snow day looks like in Nova Scotia in 2010:
Ridiculous. Ludicrous. How does this happen? Is it yet more proof that Environment Canada/CBC weather hysteria has destroyed our ability to distinguish normal weather from that which is dangerous? Is it further evidence of our society’s atrophied ability to assess and manage risk? Of our obsession with danger? Have we become a nation of ‘fraidy cats? A friend offers an alternative explanation:
They haven’t filled their quota of snow days.
Gotta get ‘em in, in other words, like the employee who makes sure to take all her available sick days, lest she “lose” them. And it’s well to remember that the school officials who manage these decisions belong to the belong to… the teachers’ union.
