POLITICS: Making kids do remote schooling on ‘snow days’ sucks

The forecast is grim for New York City school kids.

On Friday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that, no matter how many inches of the white stuff drop during Sunday’s looming storm, there will be no snow day to start the week.

“I know to the disappointment of any student that’s watching this right now, Monday is either going to be a remote learning day or it’s going to be an in-person school day,” Mamdani said on NY1.

“It’s not going to be a traditional snow day. That is a determination we’ve made.”

Booooooo …

Give these kids a damn break.

Remote learning — a horrifically ineffective holdover from the Covid lockdown era — has essentially wiped out the glorious snow day, a rite of passage for so many American kids, including right here in the Northeast.

But just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should.

To be fair, this killjoy policy didn’t start with Mamdani. In December of 2020, former Mayor Bill de Blasio essentially declared “no more snow days” as a storm was about to bear down on the Big Apple.

The Department of Education under ex Mayor Eric Adams continued with the bad wintry-weather edict, much to the dismay of parents. During a 2024 listening tour for then schools chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos, Queens mother Keely Valk aptly described remote learning as “pointless.“

But considering how our new mayor hosted an adult scavenger hunt for the amusement of our city’s permanent Peter Pan class during his campaign, one would think he’d endorse a little free play for the demographic that truly needs it: school kids.

How many more infringements on childhood will we accept?

Kids these days are increasingly over-scheduled with activities and overstimulated from being glued to zombifying screens, which experts tell us over and over are bad for them.

And now they are expected to sit all day and look at yet another screen.

How have we still not learned this lesson, even with the technical glitches of the past — like in February 2024, when kids stuck studying at home during a snowstorm were met with log-in errors?

Let’s be honest: If Monday is a remote-learning day, you’ll have a lot of disengaged teachers speaking to disengaged students — the ones whose parents push them to sign on, and who are actually able to — desperate to get outside.

Children should be given the opportunity to unplug, get out and play in the snow. They should be feral, free-range kids: throw snowballs at each other, make a snowman, go sledding in the park or earn some extra scratch by shoveling the neighbors’ sidewalks.

Snow days are a rare treat. It’s not like there is a danger of overindulging.

When I was a kid and winter storms were forecast, the nuns at my New Jersey grammar school would lean into superstition and tell students to wear our pajamas inside-out to increase our chances of having a snow day. If it did in fact, come true, we’d be saying our Hail Marys as we shimmied into our snow clothes and ran into the street for a delicious day of freedom.

It was invigorating. It was magical. And after some time out in the wild, you’d stumble on home, strip off those wet clothes and collapse from the good kind of exhaustion.

As a warm bowl of soup brought you back to life, you’d reflect on a day well spent.

Come Monday, New York City kids may log onto their computers, look outside and think, what a colossal waste.