By Sarah Hall
Editor
Baldwinsville Superintendent of Schools Matt McDonald insists his decision to call a snow day on Wednesday, March 14, had nothing to do with the National School Walkout to protest school gun violence and honor the victims of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting scheduled for the same day — and he frankly resents the implication.
“I’m afraid of nothing,” McDonald said at his most recent Coffee and Conversation event, held Thursday, March 15, at the Baldwinsville Public Library. “When I get accused of calling a snow day to avoid the walkout — the kids created that. I had no intention of avoiding it.”
McDonald said he was up at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday debating making the call.
“I was talking to my guys on the road, talking to other superintendents,” he said.
While many schools had professional development days, those districts that were open — North Syracuse, Fayetteville-Manlius and Jamesville-DeWitt — were shutting down, even though the weather in the early hours didn’t look that bad.
“[My concern was] if they all [close and] I stay open, we get bombarded, I’m going to get hammered,” McDonald said. “And I worried about getting those kids home if it got worse at the end of the day. So I said, ‘Fine, I’ll call it.’”
But because the students and staff had worked hard to organize activities to honor the Parkland victims, McDonald said those activities were carried out Thursday the 15th instead.
“The kids wanted to recognize the kids and teachers at Parkland,” McDonald said. “They did it at Ray, at Durgee and at Baker today, and there was not one issue.”
McDonald said he did confine the activities to inside the buildings out of concern for students’ safety.
“I can’t have them marching outside the buildings,” he said. “You’ve got pedophiles, you’ve got crazies — I’m not going to put my kids outside.”
McDonald noted that the kids will be organizing another event on April 20, the anniversary of the Columbine shooting.
“That’s entirely student-driven,” he said. “They have a lot of great ideas.”
April 2 will be a school day
In order to meet minimum student attendance requirements for state aid for 2017-18, school will be in session for grades K-12 on April 2. The day had originally been scheduled as a flex day. As of March 14, the district has used all of its allotted snow days for 2017-18.
McDonald said he is unsure if the two-hour delay and cancelled elementary half-day on the 15th will have any further impact on the school calendar.
“I don’t think we’ll have to make up the half day,” he said.
He said he’d be in touch with the state education department early this week to iron out the details, but with more snow predicted for this week, he didn’t want to make any announcements yet.
“We have to see if we get hit with another storm,” he said. “I don’t want to send out a message and then have to send out another. With my accent, people don’t want to hear from me too often.”
