Thursday, May 24, 2012 11:20 am
Montgomery Blair High School's Online Student Newspaper
Tags: print
May 22, 2002

Some local schools to shorten year

by Nora Toiv, Page Editor
According to the Washington Post, schools throughout the D.C. area are getting out early because of the lack of snow days.

Montgomery County is one of the school systems that is not letting their schools out. Systems in Alexandria City and Fairfax County are letting students out early while counties such as Prince George's and Howard did not build any snow days into the year and so have none to give back.

Montgomery County Schools spokesman Brian Porter said that letting students out early will generate problems and that students will just have to deal with the extra days as planned. “Turning 137,000 young people loose on a day that was not scheduled and planned for creates a ripple through many aspects of life around the county," Porter commented. “[Students] are just going to be in school those extra days," he said.

Junior Jen Sindall does not agree with the county’s decision. "If we had, had snow days we would have had those days off anyway so what’s the difference," said Sindall. "It is unfair that the other counties get out early," she said.

Junior Sara Furlow said that the county cannot "punish us for the weather" and that Montgomery County should "follow the example of other counties."



Share on Tumblr

Discuss this Article

  • Noel Ibrahim (View Email) on May 22, 2002
    Another show of ignorance and abuse of power by Montgomery County. Just let us go and get over it, we didnt get one freaking snow day, so why are we leaving later than supposed to? I cant wait to get out of this school
  • Kevin Chang on May 22, 2002
    How is this "ignorance" or "abuse of power"? Snow days aren't "extra days." Technically, the county isn't supposed to let us have ANY off at all, but usually generally they do let us have five we don't have to make up. I asked my sixth grade teacher about this since we only had one snow day that year, and she said something like "there's not enough time to finish everything we're supposed to finish as it is."

    The point is, it's not "any later than we're supposed to." I don't see what could possibly be so bad that you can't take another five days of school, especially since by the end of the year all you're doing is signing yearbooks and having parties anyways.

    Don't take that the wrong way, I'd really love to have five days off too. I'm just saying the county isn't doing anything wrong by keeping us in school.
  • Jared Sagoff on May 22, 2002
    There's not really much of an issue here; it's a shame we didn't have any snow days, but that's just the way it his.
  • Zack Tinkelman on May 22, 2002
    I will have to agree with Mr. Chang. This is the way it has always been. The story makes us (the reader) believe that the county had always given us these days off, and that some great injustice is being done this year. This misleading is especially evident in the headline, "MCPS will not refund snow days." MCPS has never done this before, and the only story, in this case, would be if they changed their policy and let us out early.

    If you must write about this, please headline (and write the rest of the story) about the actual news content: the fact that other school systems are getting out early. Don't mislead us.
  • dude on May 22, 2002
    I agree with MCPS' decision. We are not entitled to a minimum number of snow days per year, and I think it would set a bad precedent if schools were let out early.
  • Kevin Chang on May 22, 2002
    To be fair, Zach, the headline was bad, but I came up with it, not Nora. Someone had a complaint about the previous one, too. Anyways, I hope the new one is better.
  • Abby Graber on May 23, 2002
    While I realize that we don't normally get any extra days off of school so not giving them to us now is reasonable, I think that the statement made by Brian Porter is completely out of whack. How does letting students out early wreak havoc on the community and create "a ripple through many aspects of life around the county?" What, suddenly public transportation are shopping malls are flooded a week earlier than they would have been! Send in the national guard! Jeez.
  • KliQ on May 23, 2002
    AAAAAHHHHH this is soooo heinous! WHY can't we get off of school early? WHY WHY WHY?!!?!?! Yeah, and Brian Porter is right in thinking that we're all gonna go do some bad things if we got out of school early. Ok, since when is sleep a bad thing? since when is watching tv a bad thing? Cuz that's what i would be doing. that's it. i'm gonna go live in virginia.
  • mia on May 24, 2002
    not fair if we blair getting late and entering school next school year early.
  • James Weast (View Email) on May 24, 2002
    Jerry weast and his team of administrative tools at MCPS are a bunch of fascists.
  • Eric Schaffer (View Email) on May 25, 2002
    Yeah, I'll have to agree with Abby. On the other hand, it's a moot point, because school is winding down right now, so if we were let out early, we'd just miss a few days of watching movies and signing yearbooks. So yeah, Mr. Porter is probably wrong, but, eh, it's no big deal.
  • oliver (View Email) on May 28, 2002
    please don't do that
Jump to first comment