I don’t feel any stronger about school being cancelled than I do about school being open. Have school open during winter weather. If I don’t trust the bus, we will drive the children. If our neighborhood roads are glazed with ice, we will stay home. Cancel school for winter weather. We will stay home and have fun. School, no school, either is fine.

I do object to the ‘wait until 5 in the morning’ to decide on a plan. Once we get up and start looking at websites to learn what you decided, the children are up and ready to start the day. If we knew the night before, the children would get a little bit of extra sleep to make up for the hours they spent, past their bedtime, asking repeatedly if there would be school. I can’t begin to imagine how working parents scramble for childcare at 5 in the morning.

As a child, we ALWAYS knew that the ten p.m. news would have the full list of school closings for the next day. That was a different time zone, but you really should be able to decide by 11 p.m. The sun isn’t going to melt anything between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. Phone the officers who work the problem neighborhoods and make the call before the nightly news. Please.