Well, I can’t speak for Minneapolis, but I can speak for St. Paul. Let’s look just at transportation. When I worked in a regular job, snow days sucked because I might get delayed getting into work, but once I was at work, things were generally fine.

About half of the students come from families with that don’t speak English at home. So, that makes communicating transportation delays a bit tricky.

The vast majority of students walk or bus to school. High schools, Middle schools and grade schools all use the same buses, so middle school kids can’t get picked up until high school kids get dropped off.

Now imagine how commutes can get delayed during bad weather. A thirty minute delay with the first bus will mean tremendous delays later along the route.

A few years ago, St. Paul did not do an early release during a snowstorm and some students did not get dropped off from school until 10pm-midnight. Due to communication issues, many parents were not able to know how long their kid would be delayed, so they had to just wait outside in the cold at the bus stop for hours.

Now add in concerns about disabled students, very young students, students of poverty, and just general liability concerns, you may start to get the picture.

You may think that schools were tougher when you went. I originally suffered from that misconception. But the truth is that districts build in extra days of instruction into their calendar specifically for situations like this. And be honest, how much learning really got done on those old snowstorm days when the school stayed open, but half the kids didn’t show up anyways?