With snow in the forecast Monday, Garnet Valley Superintendent Marc Bertrando is bracing for his winter-weather routine: rising at 4 a.m. and hopping in his car to check out the roads.
If there’s accumulated snow, and it’s likely to continue, “it’s an easy call,” Bertrando said Friday. Meaning: a snow day for Garnet Valley students, whom he expects will be eager to take in what could be the biggest snow of the season thus far.
But not all Philadelphia-area school districts follow the same calculus — especially now that virtual learning has become more routine in the wake of the pandemic. The Upper Darby and Pennsbury school districts, for instance, sent messages to parents Thursday and Friday notifying them of the prospect of remote learning on Monday.
Christopher Dormer, superintendent of the Norristown Area School District, said Friday that if his district isn’t in-person Monday, it would likely have a virtual learning day — and that it would be rare for Norristown to call a full-fledged snow day.
Here’s how different school districts are deciding whether to have school Monday — and going forward during what may be a snowier winter than last.
Calling a traditional snow day
If the weather forecast for Monday holds, with several inches of snow predicted to accumulate around the Philadelphia region, Bertrando said he doesn’t expect kids to complete virtual lessons.
“To think that especially our younger kids are going to wake up to the first snow and say, ‘Let me get on my computer and learn something at home’ — it’s not realistic, from a parent perspective or educator perspective,” Bertrando said. He noted that Garnet Valley has two snow days built into its calendar, so calling one wouldn’t set the district back.
In Central Bucks, the first weather or emergency-related closure of the school year will be a traditional snow day, while any other closures will be flexible instructional days, with schoolwork completed at home, a district spokesperson said.
Bertrando, however, won’t call a snow day in Garnet Valley if the forecast is limited to bad winter weather — think sleet or freezing rain — without actual snow piling up on the ground.
In that case, “nobody’s going to be outside playing anyway,” but the roads may be too dangerous for buses to get kids to school, Bertrando said. The district would instead opt for virtual learning.
Lee Ann Wentzel, superintendent of the Ridley School District, also said the amount of snow matters. “If I’m going to give a snow day, I want to be sure it’s a day when kids can actually enjoy the snow,” Wentzel said, noting that a two-inch snowstorm “but minus-20-degree windchills” likely wouldn’t make the cut.
Virtual instruction instead of in-person school
In other school districts, the traditional snow day has largely been replaced by virtual learning days — and they may be becoming more frequent than snow days of the past.
Before the advent of online instruction, superintendents worried about calling snow days when the forecast was iffy. “The idea was, if you miss the call and kids got a day off, it was a black eye,” said Dormer, the Norristown superintendent.
Now, Dormer said he’s a “little more willing to call a virtual day, because the kids aren’t missing anything.”
Since the pandemic, Norristown has had one snow day — falling on a day before winter break, when kids were supposed to only have a half day, anyway, Dormer said. He prefers to call virtual instruction days because “we’ve seen a lot of value in trying to keep continuity of instruction, even under modified circumstances.” (The district does maintain a somewhat more flexible schedule on virtual days, Dormer noted: While kids are required to log in on time for the first half of the day, the second half is asynchronous work.)
Norristown would consider an official snow day if a storm was so severe that power was likely to be out, and that employees and families would need time to clear their driveways and dig out sidewalks to be prepared for the next day, Dormer said. But he said the district put parents on alert in December that “our first default always, always, always is to go virtual.”
In Upper Darby, parents were told Thursday to prepare for the possibility of virtual instruction on Monday, with students expected to log in and complete asynchronous work by 2 p.m. The district will make a decision by Sunday afternoon, said Superintendent Dan McGarry.
Similarly, Pennsbury on Friday issued a “Remote Learning Advisory” for Monday. “Our goal is to hold in-person classes if possible, this includes the possibility of a delayed opening; however, we are preparing for remote learning as a precaution,” the district said in the message to families, noting that students would have a shortened day if school is remote. Pennsbury will decide by 10 p.m. Sunday or 5:45 a.m. Monday.
Consulting with other districts
The 60-plus school districts around Philadelphia make their own decisions on snow or virtual days, in part based on the conditions in their districts. Norristown, for instance, “has a lot of small, narrow, one-way streets” that can pose challenges for buses on snowy days, Dormer said.
Still, districts do consult with each other. Dormer noted that Norristown operates a tech school along with the Colonial and Upper Merion school districts; officials don’t want to unfairly disadvantage students depending on their sending district, he said.
Wentzel noted that Delaware County superintendents have a group chat, though weather conditions in the districts closer to the river can differ from those more inland.
While Wentzel pays attention to what other districts are doing, “I try not to engage in group think,” she said. The Ridley district has told families to be ready “for any possible scenario,” she said, whether that be a snow day, virtual day, or a two-hour delay. She won’t make a decision until Sunday night or Monday morning, and, like Bertrando, also plans to wake at 4 a.m. to survey the conditions.
“It looks like I’m going to be up early Monday morning,” she said.
Staff writer Kristen A. Graham contributed to this article.