Yesterday’s surprise snow gave us a second test of the new parental alert system — calling off school mid-morning.

We made the most of it, with hot chocolate, fresh oatmeal cookies, movies and board games for the afternoon.  There wasn’t really enough snow on the ground for sledding and such, but just enough slush on the roads to call safety into question.  It also wasn’t the same all over town, as the east side of town seemed to get more accumulation on the roads than out west, where we live.

I felt some sympathy for Dr. Bailey in having to make that call: no matter what, someone will always be unhappy with the decision.  If he closes school, half the parents are unhappy because they have to take time off work; if he does not, half the parents complain that he’s putting the children at risk.  I know that yesterday’s snow wasn’t huge, but just a few miles outside our boundary, an Anderson County school bus slid off the road with a full load of children.  Fortunately, no one was hurt — but that’s the kind of risk we’d like to avoid.

For years, we went along with our three snow days in reserve, never using all of them.  I think there were a couple where we didn’t use any at all, which always made me wonder why we couldn’t add them to Spring Break, lop them off the end of the year, or toss in a couple of three-day weekends in May.  This year though, there’s the opposite concern: we could run out of snow days, and have to make them up somewhere.

In Tennessee, our biggest snowfalls have historically come in February or March.  I even remember a good one on April 1.  So, today’s question is, did the kids stay in school long enough yesterday to count for a day’s attendance by state standards, which would mean that we still have two potential snow days in reserve?

UPDATE: I’ve confirmed that Monday’s early dismissal will not count as one of our three snow days, which is a good thing.  We still have our two snowiest months to go.