It’s getting ridiculous. When it comes to snow days in Lexington, we must do better | Opinion
Lexington, we have got to do better on snow day policy.
And we can! People are really mad right now, but we are a community full of smart people who can figure this out.
Both school and city officials are in an impossible situation when it comes to the kind of big snow and ice that we had two weeks ago. You can’t please everyone, or even anyone these days. The cold weather has made snow removal even harder.
And yet, somehow, other districts in Kentucky and around the state, are managing to get back to school.
It was uniquely bad luck the storm arrived just at the end of winter break, when many students and parents were already stir crazy from two weeks off school. Many of them had not taken Chromebooks home. But even if schools open on Thursday, the week is a loss, so kids will have been basically out of school for a month.
We could be just a little more creative and a little more nimble. I have some ideas, and I know you do, too. Here are just a few:
▪ In this era of rapidly advancing climate change, weather is getting more extreme in every way. Does the city need to look at its budget and put more resources into snow removal equipment? What exactly are “ranked roads,” and why do some streets get plowed and some none at all?
▪ I was one of the people flabbergasted last year to learn the city had no idea what bus routes the school district used, so it didn’t know which streets it would be most useful to clear. Could city and school officials not sit down and work out some kind of emergency alternate bus routes that could be used in snowy weather?
And today we learn that the city did not have all the information it needed on snow routes from the school district. How is that possible?
According to my colleagues Valarie Honeycutt Spears and Beth Musgrave, Lexington Environmental Quality and Public Works Commissioner Nancy Albright said the school system provided the city with bus routes in spring 2024.
However, the school system provided additional bus routes Monday and as late as Tuesday morning, Albright said during a Tuesday Lexington council meeting.”
This should not be so hard.
▪ Could we stop letting perfect be the enemy of good? If teachers are working anyway, why can’t they be in schools and let all the students who are able come to class? Our schools are returning to neighborhood configurations. For example, William Wells Brown serves students all around it, and surely the kids can walk through a few snowy sidewalks to get there.
Could we let families work out carpools to get as many students as possible to school? And then let parents who don’t want the risk to keep their kids at home with NTI work without penalty.
▪ If we are worried that not enough kids have coats to brave this kind of cold, then let’s get every school to do a coat drive to make sure they do. (Or force the legislature to fund more family resource centers to do the same thing, but that’s another story.)
Now I will sit here — 3, 2, 1, — and wait for all the comments of why all these ideas are impossible.
District bureaucracy moves at a glacial pace. Officials don’t like to be criticized or second-guessed. That’s why giving them some creative solutions is better than just screaming about it.
Send me best ideas at lblackford@herald-leader.com.
We know we can do better. And we have to.
This story was originally published January 15, 2025 at 10:01 AM.
