Ice Ice Baby

Here's a warning for you. I'm about to bitch about the weather again. Because of freezing rain and ice, school has been cancelled yet again! It's bad enough that this is the fourth time in two weeks that we have had to cancel classes, but to make matters worse, today was supposed to be the first day of semester exams. Yesterday, in anticipation that we may have school cancelled due to the weather, an announcement was made that if there were to be no school today, then all of the semester tests would be taken on Thursday. I asked another teacher who is a department head why we couldn't just take Wednesday's semester tests on Tuesday, the next scheduled day of school after Thursday. Apparently it's because we need grades done by that morning before school to determine athletic eligibility. Now I thought that the primary goal of school was to educate, not to train athletes. A school district that is adjacent to the one for which I work, is moving their tests from today to Tuesday. I don't know why we can't do the same. I guess that sports take precedence over students being able to perform adequately on exams. I don't know how I would have done on my final exams in high school if I had to take all six or seven of them in a single day.

Each day of school that we have missed has to be made up. I guess that this is the first time in three or so years that there have been multiple cancellations of school, so it hasn't been an issue in recent years. However, I am wondering why this school district does not make any of the days we miss for three-day weekends into days that can be used for making up missed days. I'd much rather be back in school on Martin Luther King Jr. Day or Good Friday, both of which we have off as vacation. This is the first school district that I have worked for that gets Martin Luther King Day off, and in the other school district for which I have worked, Good Friday has only been a vacation day if it was at the same time as spring break. Oh well, I guess that there is little point complaining about this as the school district probably won't change it's mind about these issues, especially the prospect of having school on Martin Luther King's Birthday. Now school won't get out until June 8, making my last day of work for the school year June 9.