My First 40 Years: Snow Days, Then and Now

Canceling school for ice or snow can sometimes be complicated: Is the forecast accurate? Given the various dominoes that fall with the decision, how long can we wait on the night of a forecasted storm, or on the morning when a storm has just begun, before canceling? If our faculty and staff have children in daycare facilities or at other schools, and those facilities or schools are closing, how do we support those members of our team if we decide to have school?

January 29, 30 and 31, 2026,  were some of our easier school closure decisions since I moved to Fort Worth in 2015. First, the weather of this most recent storm came on Saturday, giving us time to see how travel would be affected by the time the school week arrived. Second, the temperatures stayed low enough (while the Fort Worth snowplow numbers remained low enough as well) that it was pretty clear things were not changing: We would be taking too many chances asking people to drive to school. 

Having only been at the desk where the school cancellation buck stops for a decade, I am not sure how decision-making for school closure has changed over the last 40 years, but I can guess. It used to be that the decision was broadcast on the radio (KRLD) or scrolled at the bottom of local television news channels (Channel 8). Sometimes the decision was conveyed via phone trees. As voicemail, then email, then “pushpage,” and now very sophisticated robocalls and texts emerged, the ease of communicating a closure changed in big ways. Compared to my first year as a teacher (1985-86), we have likely been afforded a little more time to make the decision.

The biggest change over the 40 years, then, has really just been personal: I have gone from being the teacher strategizing ways to get the administrator to cancel school to being the decision-maker who is targeted by the cancellation strategizers. 

What has not changed for me over the last 40 years of winter weather impacting school is the sheer joy of a snow day. The first snow day I experienced as a teacher was in 1986 at Casady School in Oklahoma City. I had no idea I could be any more thrilled about a snow day than I had been as a kid. The first time the weather people on TV mentioned the possibility of freezing rain that winter, I became a bit obsessed. Other young faculty and I knew that the guy making the cancellation calls was Assistant Head of School Tom Tongue. We knew where Mr. Tongue lived. We imagined his routine: Step outside in the early morning, check the sidewalk beyond the front door, maybe take a brief drive around the neighborhood. Based on forecasts of temperatures well below freezing in that 1986 week, we were prepared to sneak, stealthily, to the Tongue’s home. If, as the temperatures dropped, we sprayed enough water from their hoses on the Tongue’s sidewalks and driveway, we thought we could secure the cancellation. 

While we never sprayed those hoses, as faculty, we were ecstatic when the newscaster listing the closed schools back in January 1986 said, “Casady School.”  

While I want to have school if it’s at all possible, the joy remains the same for me as a Head of School as it was as a student and as a teacher. Going from a calendar full of homework and tests, or from back-to-back meetings and a presentation, to a day with an entirely blank schedule is a wonderful gift. As we promote better and better care of ourselves and of our students (Strategic Plan 2030 Pillar IV), I am left wishing we had the equivalent of Mr. Tongue’s hoses on a below-freezing night to “spray” just when the community needed a mental health day. Short of that sort of control, I’ll take nature’s choice to put three of those gifted days right at the end of January 2026. I could not have timed the surprise break from school and from routine any better.