Timmy Karpe, 10, of Carson City, Nev., rides his shovel down a sled hill in a park on Monday morning, Dec. 3, 2001. Carson City area kids took advantage of no school from a scheduled teacher workday and snowfall ranging from six inches in the valley to two feet at the higher elevations. (AP Photo/Nevada Appeal, Cathleen Allison)
Just because Carson City students were out of school Monday doesn't mean they forgot basic skills like math.
"No school plus snow equals fun," said Adam Ramsey, 15, an eighth-grader at Eagle Valley Middle School. "Lots of it, too."
Ramsey was one of many students to head to Blackwells Pond Park near Mark Twain Elementary School to ride sleds, toboggans, snowboards and even a shovel down the hill there.
"We can snowboard around where we live instead of going up to Tahoe and having to pay lots of money," said Spud Jacobsen, 12, a sixth-grader at Carson Middle School.
The students took advantage of the 2 to 4 inches of snow that fell the night before the already-scheduled day off.
Although students were out of school, teachers spent the day in the classroom as part of the scheduled teacher training day.
Each school coordinated its own training session with classes specific to the site and other classes to encompass statewide standards.
"Education in Nevada has really put a lot of emphasis on training students within the standards," said Richard Stokes, associate superintendent of human resources. "It's important for the teachers to understand what those standards are and use some modern techniques that are designed for teaching those standards in the classroom."
Colton Wright, 12, a seventh-grader at Carson Middle School, was excited to see the snow had fallen just before their day off.
"I was like the first person out here," he said. "I got here around 8. I wanted to get here for the fresh powder."
And at 2 p.m., they didn't have plans of going back home anytime soon.
However, other children looked for a way to get out of the snow on their day off.
Twins Bethany and Joshua Giurlani, both seven and second-graders at Fritsch Elementary School, went to the Carson City Library to check out books.
"I like to stay in with books," Bethany said. "I like to read. It's fun."
Their grandmother, Ann Smith, has been taking them to the library since they were 14 months old.
"They went through every story hour and now they check out 40 books a week," she said.
