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The state of American education prompts a lot of finger-pointing. Governments don’t spend enough. Public schools need competition. Some parents aren’t engaged enough.
But this week’s winter storm in North Texas may have revealed the ultimate culprit: We’re just not all that serious about education.
What other conclusion is there after many Dallas-Fort Worth school districts closed for four days — and some the entire week — when snow and ice arrived?
The storm hit Saturday and was done dropping precipitation Sunday. Monday and Tuesday were bitterly cold, and the sheet of ice all over our streets and sidewalks had not budged. Canceling school (and just about every other optional human activity) was a no-brainer.
Wednesday morning was treacherous, too. No issues there.
But the temperature approached 50 degrees later that day. And yet opening schools Thursday, even on a delay to account for refreezing, was just too much for some districts.
Dallas. Keller. Aledo. Grand Prairie — all closed for a fourth straight day. Northwest and Decatur are among the districts that threw up their hands and declared the whole week a loss.
Fort Worth ISD has a lot of problems, but it gets an A for reopening Thursday. We need FWISD kids in school as much as possible, and the district stepped up to the challenge.
If educational concerns actually matter, there’s a way for districts to prove it, unpopular but necessary. First, let’s explore how we got here.
A lot of factors contributed, including safetyism and our ever-weakening capacity to gauge risk. Then there was the admittedly complex challenge of transporting teachers and students to campuses in more-rural areas where there wasn’t much melting.
There’s also the astonishing failure to plan for a storm that was forecast at least a week in advance. School districts made day-by-decisions but apparently didn’t think about how to react if ice lingered.
Anyone around here ever heard of salting icy paths?
People do function in winter weather. Work and school go on every winter in places such as Michigan and New England. Some districts cited concerns about dangerous parking lots and sidewalks, still icy long after highways largely cleared up.
Humans can, in fact, greatly reduce the risk of walking on ice by treating it with sand or salt. For 16 bucks, Home Depot sells a 40-pound bag of a product literally named Ice Melt. Buy it in bulk from a wholesale supplier and it’s surely cheaper. Store it properly and it never expires.
Are we seeing an epidemic of broken bones or crashes in the drop-off lane in districts that did go back Thursday? Of course not.
No one wants local governments to overspend for weather conditions that rarely arrive. It’s why our side streets stay slick until Mother Nature fixes them. We have to balance preparedness and prudence.
Our schools are struggling, though. We know about poor test scores in FWISD, Lake Worth and some larger suburban districts. But achievement levels aren’t exactly impressive in many other districts, especially in the core subjects of math and reading.
More broadly, we’re in a race to stave off China’s play to dominate the world, especially in science and technology, and our inability to keep schools open demonstrates our lame approach to the contest.
After a two-week holiday break, kids went back to school the first full week in January. Then there was the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Presidents Day is coming, and some districts will make that a four-day weekend.
After the storm, students will go back for about six weeks, and then it’s spring break. How can we expect children to retain lessons and build on them? A serious society would say: Unfortunately, nature and our failure to plan for it gave us a weeklong break in January, so we can’t afford another one in March.
That’s right. We should cancel spring break.
Makeup days, waivers, extra minutes in school aren’t enough
The outcry would be huge. Families would have to cancel vacations. Teachers, through no fault of their own, would have their plans disrupted.
If we’re going to manage risk by declaring that any amount of additional danger means closing school for a week, we’ve got to make sacrifices somewhere. If our school administrators are incapable of planning for an annual winter storm, we’ll have to adjust for their incompetence.
Districts have make-up days built into the calendar. They’ll go to the state seeking waivers of class-time requirements. They’ll also schedule slightly longer days here and there to add minutes — because that’s how a serious society builds a solid education, by tracking 15-minute increments in a spreadsheet.
What if it happens again? February and even early March can bring dangerous ice, too. Maybe by then, districts can grab a few pallets of road salt.
Why would they, though, when school is clearly so unimportant that kids can just miss it for an unplanned week?
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Ryan J. Rusak
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