Why is it that we haven’t had snow days when other schools have? On February 15th, the roads of Ames were completely coated with ice, making driving a pain. The Ames School District responded by doing absolutely nothing, forcing many high schoolers to brave the awful road conditions. The school buses didn’t even arrive to school on time, so how did they expect the students to? There was no delay of any kind, despite other schools having it in the area.

Students were being forced to stand in freezing temperatures outside to wait for their bus, causing illnesses to spread through the school like a wildfire. The purpose of snow days and late starts is to keep the students safe, but what’s the point if we never use them? People are forced to go through terrible road conditions and low temperatures in order to go to school, when it could be just as easy to delay for two hours and let everyone arrive safely.

This past year our school calendar went through a massive renovation, which added 16 snow days into our calendar in order to compensate for snow days. What is the point in having them if we don’t use them? We’ve only had one snow day all year, but we have needed at least four. Other schools in Ames have cancelled due to bad weather, what is stopping us? People claim that if they are concerned about their safety, then they should just skip school or arrive late, but by doing that, we miss crucial class time and get punished for it. If the conditions are bad, the schools need to take an action about it. We can’t keep ignoring the bad weather, we need to do something about it.