The following article was published in The RamPage, Bangor High's school newspaper. The RamPage is a student-led organization.
Lindell Smiley, Senior Editor of RamPage
December 2, 2024
With a growing trend of schools moving away from traditional snow days, Bangor plans to proceed as usual.
The RamPage spoke with new superintendent, Dr. Robinson, to discuss the school department’s plan concerning snow days going forward. Right off the bat, Robinson confirmed, “Remote days are not a go.” She cited the difficulties of ensuring internet access to all students and distributing lunches as impediments to remote learning when dangerous road conditions close schools. “There are more innovative ways to develop remote days,” she said, but they require extensive planning and preparation with much of the burden falling on teachers to organize backup lesson plans.
Robinson believes in inherent benefits of traditional snow days, acknowledging that, “It’s nice to have a break.” She also noted that snow days can be motivating to students during the middle of the school year, providing opportunities to do things students wouldn’t have time to do otherwise, and that snow days are an exciting cultural tradition of the northeast. Dr. Robinson has memories from growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs and attentively listening to the radio or TV whenever there was a chance for one of the area’s relatively rare snow days.
Dr. Robinson also revealed that she will not be continuing the practice of writing haikus for school dismissals but instead has a new plan for making announcement videos in cooperation with students throughout the school district.
Currently, five snow days are built into the school calendar, meaning that until six snow days have been called, they won’t have any effect on the date of the last day of school. The process for calling a snow day begins at about 4:30 PM of the prior day and involves discussion among staff of the Bangor School Department, the Cyr bus company, and other superintendents in the area.
Whether you like to wear your pajamas inside out in hopes of snow days or partake in Mr. Sanders’ ritual of flushing ice cubes the night before, rest assured that this treasured part of life in Bangor is here to stay.