When it snows, the first question that comes to my mind is will school be cancelled? As the snow piles up, it gives me the hope of a day off. I wake up, go to the North Penn School district’s website and look for the promising red letters, signaling a precious snow day. My enthusiasm has clouded my perception, because when I check again I see that it is not a day off but a two hour delay. This means, the snow removal services who plow the streets overnight came to spoil my dreams and bring my nightmares to life by ruining my day off.

Mixed emotions sweep over me whenever I see that it is a two hour delay. I am happy to get to sleep a little longer, but I am disappointed I still have to go to school for six hours.

Two hour delays cause problems in the classroom. Two hour delays cut the class period time substantially, teachers are forced to speed up their lessons and cram in as much material as possible before the bell rings. Students are being rushed through their schedules, speeding through Powerpoints and worksheets, not having the opportunity to learn the material and the criteria that may be needed for an assignment.

“School is a great place to see my friends and learn new things, but when it snows the roads become dangerous and so do the people on them. I feel like it should be one or the other, a day off or a school day,” says Brian Piscatelli.

Snow removal services do their best to clear all of the roads in the area for safer travel for school kids and for people going to work. However, they can only clear so much in a given time. Their priorities are the main roads and then they work their way to the side roads and developments. These secondary roads are not normally done in time for the two hour delay, they are still dangerous because they are snow covered and or icy. A lot of the drivers that come to the high school are inexperienced to driving in the snow, and that can lead to dangerous situations for young student drivers.

Two hour delays are a good thing, they give kids time to sleep in and an opportunity to go to school. However, the reduction of class period time and the dangers that the weather brings to the roads, make me believe that we should not have two hour delays at all. I believe it should either be a day off or a full day of school, I do not want a Hershey kiss, I want the full chocolate bar.