We REALLY Don't Do Snow Days.

I happen to be the proud employee of the ONLY school district in all five major Texas cities (and many smaller cities) that actually had school on Friday.

Not that I was proud enough to go myself, but proud.

Apparently, and I was not aware of this, but we are trying to make the national news or something for being so gung-ho about learning!

(No one has confirmed this for me, however.)

AND we are starting a new program that is going to save us pennies on the cost of printing Perfect Attendance Awards for the kiddos.

(I have yet to have that one confirmed as well.)

Furthermore, this might be because we actually have a program where if a teacher takes only two days off throughout the year, the school will give them a bonus $400 (I really don't pay attention to the details of this program because taking a few days off is WELL WORTH giving up a few hundred dollars). But anyhow, they MUST HAVE seen a shortfall in the money in that account and had to come up with a way for teachers to miss out on that money.

Because one or ALL of these theories must be true in order for us to be the only school in five major cities to have school on a day where there was definitely a dangerous amount of ice and snow on the ground. (I know it doesn't look so dangerous in these pictures, but there was a layer of frozen rain under the snow.)

But all sarcasm aside, I did see a car skid side-to-side in my apartment parking lot at midnight Thursday night and I thought, well there's no way we'll have school tomorrow.

Imagine my shock when I woke up to find a two hour delay was all to be had by my district. I looked outside and it was completely white. I can see I-35 from my window and I could see 18 wheelers pulled over and lined up on the side of the highway going southbound, the direction I would need to go. Plus I thought how the first thing I would have to do is drive up a, all-be-it slight, hill to get out of my apartment. Then over a highway overpass. Then face whatever it was that was making 18 wheelers pull over going southbound. AND if I made it beyond all that I would then have back country roads that wind back-and-forth and is about a 30-minute going 80 mph (I mean, no, I don't speed) road to face.

I realize there are people from the north that are probably laughing at me and this post. But I have NO CLUE how to drive on ice and I would have about 25-30 miles to drive in it!

No thank you. So I called in. And then I found out several other teachers called in along with many students.

In fact, so many people called in that they ended up putting every three classes together. That works out perfect because we have about three teachers for every grade level subject. However, all three of us 6th grade science teachers called in. So we heard it good from the math teachers, who stepped up and split themselves up so they could watch our classes.

All-in-all we had less than 400 of the usual 1000 students that go to our school. We had about 20 teachers out. I heard that even with putting the three classes together, they still didn't fill the desks of one classroom. Looking today I found that all my classes had between 4-8 students that showed.

Then there were the stories of the accidents, ditch landings and slip-and-slidding that went on for those whom did come to school.

Wow. Just wow.

I mean, would ONE SNOW DAY have killed us? REALLY???