![]() ![]() You couldn’t really even joke around with him about the subject. ![]() (I’m feeling even more ill.) I once worked for a Superintendent who truly hated facing decisions about snow days. Imagine if the worth of your entire career were measured by decisions you had to make, alone, at four in the morning, with limited information, that involved assessing risks to children. Far and wide, across the land, Superintendents are known by hundreds and hundreds of thousands of students and parents only by virtue of being the Oz-like figure behind the curtain who calls snow days, and is otherwise a complete cipher. A year or so ago, I had occasion to attend a meeting with the now-embattled Larry Summers and several of my colleagues, and he mentioned that throughout his entire elementary and secondary educational career, his only impression of, and judgment about, the school Superintendent had to do with decisions the guy made about snow days. In fact, it’s the only thing most people think of us at all. It also determines what everyone else thinks of us. It is how we measure each other, and ourselves. How we handle this decision reveals what we are made of. ![]() This is because among the hundreds of critical decisions we make on a weekly basis, calling off school for a snow day is as Mt Everest is to the gentle slopes of Blue Hill. We continue to keep half an eye on budgets, test scores, and policies, but the other eye and a half is firmly fixed on the weather map. In winter, there is only one thing that Superintendents think about. Published in the Boston Globe, circa 2000 ![]()
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