Ask any fifth grader, they would jump for joy at the whisper of the words snow day. But this isn’t fifth grade anymore and in high school, snow days have been less exciting and more stressful.

Snow days can be a time to rest, procrastinate or be productive. “I enjoy snow days because they let me relax,” said sophomore Abby Marino. “If I need to finish work or study, I have more time (…) Dr. Jeck is a blessing.”

Many know our superintendent Dr. David Jeck from his twitter account where he posts about school cancellations along with other things. “I think it’s informative and effective for people who have social media,” said sophomore McKenzie Hurley. “But it’s also really cool because kids can tweet him and he responds.” While many enjoy the excitement of receiving the no-school notification, some do not.

When you add creeping deadlines and tests on to the loads of work, stress becomes common among students. With constant snow days, some students feel like they need to spend more time in class to grasp the material.

“Snow days are great when they are really needed but when the superintendent calls off school for a little bit of snow that hasn’t affected the roads is kind of ridiculous,” said senior Hannah Johnson. “We could be using those days to go into school and save the built in snow days for a much larger storm.”

Teachers are also feeling the pressure from the lack of time in class. “They’re nice to have a day off and relax,” said math teacher Roseanna Lantz, “but it causes the instruction to fall behind….so it really hurts the students as far as having consistency in learning the material.”

With interrupted curriculum, teachers and classes  fall behind and have to re-learn the material after being out of class for several days because of snow days.

A question among students is whether spring break will be shortened because of constant snow days. The Fauquier County Public School (FCPS) Administration has not agreed to shorten our spring break up until now, although there are built-in make-up days, May 29 and May 30 along with banked hours.

“I am very thankful that the state allows us to ‘bank’ time,” said Dr. Jeck. “If they didn’t, we’d have real problems from year to year…especially in years like this wherein we have missed a lot of days.”

With unexpected events caused by snow days, we now know how to prepare. Is it time to tweet Dr. Jeck or sleep in?