Regarding snow days and teaching schedules:
Traditionally, a system will add a few days in to allow for snow; generally 3-5 days. At the end of the year, you either got out early for the days you did not use or make up any extra beyond. Sometimes a planned holiday or other day off might be forfeited in it's place. That's for a normal system.
If there is a stretch of extra bad weather which causes you to use up extra days, they can apply to the State to waive those days. Occasionally, that waiver is granted like when we had that crazy snowstorm in 2003, I think it was.
For a whacked out system like Baltimore City, it can be a whole other story. When I was teaching there, those bastards wouldn't close for anything! In fact, for a few years, they refused to even place any snow days into the calendar. Katrina could have hit and they would insist on opening on time! and then stay open all day. If the parents complained, they would just tell them they had the option of not sending their children to school or come pick them up early. On nasty days, any lateness or absences for the students was never held against their record or even showed up on their report cards; however, the falculty and staff were docked and not even allowed to use sick time if they did not come in.
The dirty little secret was that Baltimore City was hellbent on playing Big Mother towards these kids. City Government would close yet the schools would open with the excuse that they had to feed these kids. Bullshit! It's a flipping school, not their homes! As we all knew, and often said, it would take the death of a student on their way to school on a day like today for them to finally change that policy. In the meantime, I had known a couple teachers and other staff who had died trying to get into work on these days but the damn City couldn't care less about their own employees.
Ironically; and not at all surprisingly; on a day like this, the Superintendent at the time demanded that schools open on time yet he never came into work himself. I think it was then the next ice storm when the girl died on her way to school. Real shame and I still blame the damned school system for her death. Now they have 3 snow days worked into their calendar and will close; of course, this all started just after I quit. My dumb luck! When you have to make the days up, it is a total waste to open the schools for nothing but a busy day because there are just enough absences and disruptions to the schedules that you usually can't conduct important classes those days. The other teachers know what I'm talking about.
One thing I've noticed, the DC area seems to be much, much better at allowing their employees some leaway with bad days and holidays. I rarely see that in Baltimore. Wish more businesses used more common sense like DC. Days like this, people should stay home and keep the roads clear.
