Sleeping in late, drinking hot chocolate, and sledding down Championship Hill are all activities common for a snow day at Pennridge. With virtual learning transforming the academic school year schedule, snow days are bound to be impacted as well. The new ability for the whole district to learn from home has provided Pennridge with a unique situation. Instead of adding on days to the end of the year, they could choose for the students to learn from home. 

Dr. Bolton clarified that to determine whether or not to have a snow day is not only up to him. He works with The Directors of Operations and Transportation to monitor weather outlets and come up with a decision. He also works with the superintendents from the Palisades and Quakertown School Districts, because all three schools send students to the same Upper Bucks County Technical School.

This decision comes with a multitude of pros and cons. The ability to learn from home relieves the stress that comes with adding more school days onto the end of the year. Mr. Hegen, a member of the staff at Pennridge, said “It’s still important for kids to be off once in a while,” and agreed that winter is a draining time of the year for students. 

With the most recent snow days, being February 1st to 3rd, Pennridge has seen a drastic change. From Monday to Wednesday, the school district determined all learning would continue asynchronously. Some students loved the idea, and wanted to get their work done, as to not extend the school year. Others were less enthused about the idea, due to the massive amounts of snow needing to be shoveled. Teachers were forced to rearrange their lesson plans to make virtual learning accessible to the students they had planned on seeing in class. 

Snow days for the 2020-2021 school year are unlikely to occur, with the precedents that have already been set. Pennridge called one official snow day in December, however since then, asynchronous learning had been the go-to. While students may have less time for building snowmen and making snow angels, this means the students will finish school and graduate on the expected date of June 15th.

Regardless of the unique circumstances with snow days this year, snow days next year will probably look similar to ones of the past. When asked about future snow days, Dr. Bolton responded saying that asynchronous snow days are up in the air for next year. The state of emergency this year has allowed for flexibility when it comes to snow days, however Pennridge would need to apply for this flexibility in the future. 

With or without virtual learning, Pennridge students have still managed to make snow days fun! Between teachers offering extra credit to build snowmen, and some giving the students easy work to complete, students have gone sledding, built their snowmen and had plenty of snowball fights.