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Boston's sudden change in snow policy

Boston school in the snow shortly before 8 a.m. Photo by Jean-Marie Lovett.Mozart School in Roslindale in the snow shortly before 8 a.m. Photo by Jean-Marie Lovett.

For the past few years, Boston's erred on the side of caution when it comes to snow. But today, BPS decided school must go on. Grr. I'm typing this at the Blue Star in Roslindale Square, where I stopped for breakfast after running the kidlet up to Forest Hills for her bus to school, since there's no way I'm getting back up our hill, which we slalomed down on the way to Forest Hills. Even Hyde Park Avenue was a mess.

UPDATE: At noon, BPS announced that any kids who missed school today would get an automatic excused absence. No word if kids who did make it in will get a gold star or something.

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Comments

Just look outside...or on Twitter...Here's to another A+ for the city's storm response!

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bitch when they close, bitch when they open. Blogging!

(light-heartedly said, fwiw)

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The reason for the sudden about face is that so many days have already been cancelled due to Chicken Littleism when a few flakes of snow are predicted, that they now would have to start being made up by cancelling April vacation or extending the school year. Besides, today's moderate storm is not the type of storm that would have caused a school closure back when I was in school. People may pause here for a "harumph" if they wish, but it's true.

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Did you have to walk uphill both ways to get there? Was chiseling on stone tablets difficult?

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Just when everybody's hitting the roads. Yes, this is more snow than was forecast, but BPS has closed in the past for less.

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They don't have any more snow days in the budget. The teacher contract probably doesn't include them working past the current end day without extra $$. Cheaper to put it on the parents.

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Or non-decision, as it may be. I don't get it--it's not like it didn't snow all day yesterday...or like it isn't predicted to snow all day today. Dismissal is going to be a mess. And it sounds as if a lot of teachers decided--wisely--to stay home.

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...for thinking, as I franticly dug the car out this morning, that Boston would normally have closed schools and declared a snow emergency at the first hint of something like this.

At least this time around there was evidence that plows had actually been on my street overnight!

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yet there's school today. I suppose people could just have kept their kids home anyway- maybe it won't count as an absence? I doubt there will be much learning going on if a ton of teachers and students are out.

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Don't worry, if there is a lot of flack about this, Menino will promise the public that he wasn't satisfied with the decision and that he is looking for answers. Then he'll go look for something else to put his name on.

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Doesn't make any sense. I kept my BPS'er home. I was watching the school bus that picks up at my corner try to make the turn..it was scary, the whole back of the bus was fishtailing. Dumb decision by the superintendent and mayor dummy. We'll be homeschooling today. I would love to see the # of absences, both students and teachers today.

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I don't have a child so I am seriously asking: Why did anyone take their kids to school this morning? Can't parents just decide not to send them when they feel like it? I seem to recall my parents keeping me out if they took a notion to.

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We didn't take our BPSer to school today, but - open schools mean our employers expect us to be at work, mean our backup snow day care option is not available. An official closure would really help us out here.

I thought the closures for Nemo were a tad ridiculous - we should NOT have needed three days of school closure for that storm! - but not closing today is putting students at risk.

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Yeah, as long as it's not excessive, you can keep them home. But a lot of people have jobs that aren't professional-level and they can't just stay home with their kid if school isn't closed (or even if it is -- that's why they open up community centers on snow days for kids to spend the day).

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I could have taken the day off of work or I could have left 10 minutes earlier to get my kid to school. My kid was eager to actually go to school so yeah, I drove them in. What's the big deal?

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In the time it took us to shovel our sidewalk and driveway and start getting our car cleared, we watched three spinouts on the street. That's why we stayed home, and why I'm not thrilled about busses full of kids on the road today.

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See the other comments about employers' expectations, but speaking for myself, I tend to feel that if school is open, my kids should be there. I don't take them out for the sake of vacation timing, I don't take them out because I judge the weather to be difficult. But at the same time, I think BPS made the wrong call here.

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but if there are tests scheduled, etc...once kids are in HS it's sometimes more of a pain to miss school and make up the work than it is to stay home.

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Bone-headed decision. 300 of 500 kids absent at my BPS school today. Parents have more sense than all the administrators at Court St. and City Hall combined. But, absenteeisms will count as "constructively present". Great.

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The best part is that they didn't plow worth a shit. Comm Ave is a train wreck, Mass Ave is a disaster, everything sucks. Sidewalks are shitty too.

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was so poorly plowed, I saw a cabbie stop for a yellow light. True story.

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Same thing in Arlington. Did I miss a memo that this wasn't really going to be a big storm? Or that it was all going to be over before dawn? Three main streets near my house (including Park Ave) looked like they hadn't been touched by a plow when I left this morning a little after 8.

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BPS really messed up on this decision to open schools today. Sidewalks aren't clear and the city hasn't plowed streets. I kept the kids home because our street wasn't plowed (again!). Did Carole and Tom actually communicate at all on this? Or check the forecast?

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30 minutes after the official start of school, the sidewalk in front of the main entrance to Boston Latin School hadn't been shoveled.

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Watch Barry Burbank? It was snowing long after the start of school.

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even with schools open, the streets and traffic seemed much better than those days where school was closed.

For those sidewalks and places that weren't shoveled? I walked over them with my boots, and didn't even get my feet wet.

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Well aren't you a badass?

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regardless of what kind of weather we were going to have today.

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Or Forest Hills.

The roads around here were just awful. Secondary roads hadn't been plowed since last night (when we had three sand/salt trucks come by in the span of a couple of hours, at least on our street) and because the snow was coming down so heavily, even the main roads were in tough shape (Hyde Park Ave. worse than Washington Street for some reason, maybe because it's two lanes?).

Around 8 p.m., when I left the Blue Star restaurant in Roslindale Square, inbound traffic on Washington was backed up to Metropolitan Avenue - which is bad even for Washington Street in the morning.

I was at the Blue Star because, well, see the original post. As expected, I could not get up our hill, although part of this was my own damn fault - I've been meaning to bring the car in for new tires for awhile now ...

Now I'm off to shovel out two spaces: The one where I finally left the car, at the bottom of the hill, and the one in front of our house where I'll park it, assuming I can finally get the car up the hill.

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Around 06:15. Came in on 109, cut through Westwood, Dedham, onto Washington and then Centre to the VFW and then Rt. 9 in Brookline down towards Huntington and then into Roxbury.

It was slow, but not as bad as the previous storms.

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You'll be the bus driver who has to pickup the students in wheel chairs or with special transport needs during an intensifying storm where there has been little plowing or shoveling.

Over and over again, just like groundhog day.

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He is already driving that bus around Boston.

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As I dug out my car and measured 13 inches in the backyard...I wondered what BPS was thinking. My conclusion is that what BPS is doing is avoiding burning another day with the expectation that at least half the parents and teachers will not show up. I expect, for the kids who show up today, they will find a very empty school.

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My car just got stuck in the driveway. This means that I won't be able to drive it to pick up my kindergartener at school this afternoon. Since my husband is traveling this afternoon, he is leaving the office now, walking to her school and then bringing her home on the subway. He will then have to take the T back so work.

If I can't get out of my driveway, I cannot imagine that there won't be problems with buses getting around the city. And it's still coming down hard with hours left before the trip home. I hope everyone gets home safely. I'm wishing I hadn't sent my five-year-old out in this.

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If your husband can get her home that way, why can't you pick her up that way?

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If the five-year-old is an only kid, I hear you.

If there are babies at home, it could get dangerous or impossible if you can't get a stroller going and can't carry, say, three kids at once across a slushy road and over snow banks.

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.

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My other child is a 3 year old with severe asthma and the walk to the subway is 1/2 mile away, so that is not an option. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who either had difficulty getting their kids to school or will have difficulty picking them up. If its going to be problematic for a majority of the kids to get to school, not to mention unsafe, it should be cancelled. I hope they get the roads cleared and get the kids home safely without nightmare stories of kids stuck on buses for hours.

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they had school. Our ski slope/street was unplowed when we left for Forest Hills; HP Ave. was indeed a mess -- cars sliding all over; I nearly wiped out a few times. Practically begged my kid to stay home, but he wouldn't... And here it is, 11:20 a.m., and it's still coming down...

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So this is code for "We know we made a bad decision, sorry for the screw-up," right?

BostonPublicSchools ‏@BostonSchools
Parents: If you decided to keep your child home today that's okay. We will mark all absences as excused today. #bosnow

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Just got a BPS robocall: Kids who were absent today will be marked "constructively present."

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Instead of calling in "sick," I hereby will use this phrase every time I simply don't feel like going work...Change approved!

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For one darn thing or another, it would have been nice to get that call at 6:45 this morning letting me know that school was essentially optional, before I sent the kid off in snow up to her knees. She said most of her teachers were no shows today and I can't really blame them.

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"Parents baffled by Menino's decision to open schools" or some such thing?

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One of Boston's Finest says this is why his hair tested positive for cocaine?

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It's not too bad in New Haven, CT where Deval's new $200,000 Early Education Commissioner lives. Heck, it's not even bad in Ware, MA at her second job.

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Public Works still does not know how to REMOVE the snow.

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I work as a custodian for BPS and it was a huge mistake having school today. First off they had us come in two hours early at 4am, anything that got accomplished at my school between that time and school opening was minimal, the snow was coming down too fast. As soon as I was done it was back to the beginning.

The neighbors didn't appreciate the snow blower running so early, I wouldn't had either if I lived in the area. One even called the city to say I was dumping snow on the street, couldn't have been further from the truth. It all went on school property.

At around 5am the plows came through the parking lots (the only time all day) and since there is residence parking in the lot till 7am the only area that was plowed was the middle. Which lead to numerous staff and parents getting stuck.

Inside the building was a ghost town, most of the staff showed up, but most of the students did not. It would have been even less if there wasn't a big play going on this weekend.

At the end of the long day the school buses were completely blocking streets off due to no where to pull over and as I left I saw a dozen teachers trying to dig their cars out of an unplowed lot.

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I'm surprised the custodians didn't get blamed for not calling off school.
When everyone else in the City gets to go home early because of inclement weather, the custodians are expected to stay.
Do you remember a few years ago when the Mayor wanted to privatize custodial services in the Schools? Can you imagine what would happen when it snows?

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I am a BPS teacher and would like to thank the custodian who gave me a push when I was stuck in the parking lot after school.

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Work in a Charter school with about 300 students, we had about 50 yesterday (maybe less) and not enough teachers to run the school. None of the sidewalks or streets I had to walk down were clear aside from in front of the school where out miracle worker custodian cleaned up better than anywhere else in Roxbury.
During the last school cancellations I was out walking around for both Monday and Tuesday without feeling like I or anyone else was in danger. Yesterday was complete madness

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