EDITOR:
I woke up early Dec. 7 at 5 a.m. with my brother Shawn in hopes for our first snow day. Our eyes were glued to Channel 8 News. Then, as we had hoped, the names of the schools that were closed came across the screen.
Washoe County School District ... closed. Tahoe schools ...closed. Carson schools ... closed. Even Lyon County schools were closed. I wasn't sure if Douglas County schools were closed, so we called the school district. They said school would be in, as usual. So I walked out into 2 feet of snow to wait for my bus in bone-chilling weather. The bus rounded the corner and we boarded it.
The bus driver was even confounded by the statement that our schools were the only ones that weren't out. We got stuck in the snow as we turned on Opalite and Tourmaline.
We finally got out. They we got stuck again on Silverado Drive. We finally had to call the shop guy to get the bus fixed. We found out it was because our snow chain had broken. We had to have been stuck there for 45 minutes. We finally got out on the highway, but had to stop many times to fix our chains. We arrived by third period that morning. Most of the kids didn't even come to school. So many of my friends called in sick and went snowboarding.
What I don't get is why Assistant Superintendent Rich Alexander decided to send us to school? Yes, he had to make the decision to keep the schools open early in the morning, but it had already snowed the night before, and was still snowing that morning. So why did they subject us to the dangerous snowy weather conditions that morning? I may not know. But the fact that I have been late to school every day this week due to road conditions doesn't please me. Though even worse is that one of my best friends slipped while getting off the bus and broke her ankle. In my opinion the district's decision to keep us in school was idiotic, when we could have made up the day at the end of the year. I'm sure none of us kids would have minded.
Crystal Judd, 13
Carson Valley Middle School student
Indian Hills
