Delay Days: Two-hour delayed starts and 25-minute class periods are a waste of a school day

As National Winter Weather Advisories and blizzard warnings have blown up our phones this winter, there’s always been one good thing that came out of these notifications: snow days.  

With seven snow days so far this semester I feel like I’ve barely attended school this semester. I’ve started diving into new books and watching a new season of Grey’s Anatomy, making snow days my escape from reality. 

Yet, sometimes flushing ice down the toilet and sleeping with spoons under your pillow fails, and that hope for a snow day gets crushed when there’s no emails or calls from the school.

There’s only one thing worse than waking up to a full day of school after your snow day calculator and teachers promised you a day off — a two-hour delayed start.

Plan C snow days are a waste of a school day, with useless 25-minute class periods that are too short to get any work done in class.

Don’t get me wrong, sleeping until 9:00 a.m. is great, but when I have to attend all seven classes in a time crunch, I sit down, listen to my teacher explain the week’s agenda, and class is already over. Seven period days are already short enough as is, so let’s not add 25 minute classes into the week as well.

Delayed start days throw my whole week off. As I write in my daily planner what homework I need to complete depending on which teachers I see, having two seven-period blocks in a week messes with my carefully curated homework agenda. That AP Statistics homework will have to get done on Wednesday instead of Friday due to seeing my teacher an extra day during the week.

Not only are the 25-minute periods short and pointless, they also cause issues for students who have reduced schedules. 

Delayed start days make it impossible for students to head home during their free periods, let alone enough time to even walk out to the snowy parking lot and back inside. 

Not to mention how dangerous the school parking lots can be. From constant sliding, cars not being able to make it up the hill on Delmar and dreadful walks from the sophomore lot to East, they might as well just cancel school.

While the two-hour delay is meant to allow time for temperatures to rise and parking lots to thaw, I have found myself walking inside the school still freezing and still slipping on sheets of ice.

Plan C snow days don’t eliminate driving risks and are a huge waste of time. At that point, I would rather just have the usual odd block day and sit through an hour-and-a-half block period.