Sam Foley
On December 6th, a snowstorm hit New England, snowing over a foot in many areas. In North Attleboro, 12-18 inches of snow were predicted in the forecast. Snow started falling the night of December 6th and continued throughout the next morning.
Many towns around North Attleboro cancelled school completely for December 7th and 8th, such as Attleboro, Mansfield, and Foxboro High Schools. Some expected North to completely cancel school, but they instead decided to have everyone attend online school.
Everyone in cohort B, who usually attended school in person on Thursday and Friday, would stay home and remotely attend school. Cohort A and remote students logged on remotely as normal on Thursday and Fridays.
There are three options: A snow bag day, where students complete snow bag assignments at home, online school, where both cohorts participate in online classes, or a full cancellation, where the day would be made up at the end of the year.
Some students think that school should be completely cancelled, while others think that we should still have online classes or snow bag assignments.
Jack Callahan, a senior at North Attleboro High School, says, “I think it should be a snow bag day because I have to shovel my driveway and help my elderly neighbors shovel their driveway. Instead, I will have to attend classes all day and then go to work without shoveling my driveway.”
Andrew Faris, another senior at North Attleboro High School, says, “It shouldn’t be a snow bag day because I think the snow bag assignments are useless and a waste of time. Most of them are about old topics or completely random topics. They should either just cancel school or have remote classes.”
There are problems with each decision, however. If the school has a full remote day, some students may lose power and be marked absent for their classes. As Jack Callahan mentioned, many students are also busy shoveling snow and might not have time to complete homework.
With a full cancellation, school will be extended further into June, after many students have already taken AP exams or finished the course material, so those days will not be as useful.
If it is a snow bag day, students will have to complete snow bag assignments. But the problem with snow bag assignments is that they must be printed long before the snow day, so teachers cannot assign work that is relevant to the current topic. As Andrew said, much of the work is on random topics that won’t really help students and is just busy work.
Fuller Collins, a senior at North Attleboro High School, brought up an issue he had with the system. He said, “I don’t like how we are doing snow days because in the previous years Seniors got snow days and they never had to make it up. But instead of getting snow days we get useless work we still have to do.”
December 7th and 8th ended up being full remote days, where students had remote classes all day. Many students had complaints about how the school handled the “snow day” and the lack of communication between the school and students on the schedule.
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