Georgia closing school because of gas?!

The BBQ Pit
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Disclaimer: This is not a bash against Georgia, the state where I was born and raised. This is a bash against its governor.

From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050924/ap_on_re_us/rita_gas_prices_hk3:

Well, this is just insane. I’m sure all the kids (except the goodie-two-shoes who like learnin’) are rejoicing, but come on? How is this going to help anything?

Number one, it’s not like these are “throw away” days. They have to be made up. Chances are, the make-up days will take place on days when gas costs MORE than it does now. Meaning, there will be no savings. Absolutely NONE.

Secondly, he made this announcement on FRIDAY. Meaning, parents will need to be up on their current events during the next two days so that they don’t drive Jose and Taquisha to school on Monday. Guess what? You can bet a lot of parents will not know about this because they don’t watch the news or read the paper. Sounds implausible, but I know it will happen. For those parents, there will be no savings in gas. In fact, they will waste it scrambling back and forth from an empty school building. (And don’t forget a lot of the parents who don’t watch the news will end up pushing their kids out of the house to catch schoolbuses that won’t come. What’s going to happen to those kids?)

Thirdly, this presents hardship on parents. They have two days to find a babysitter. Many will end up driving to drop kids off across town to relatives or daycare centers. Some parents will opt to take the day off, but will they stay home? No! They will load up the SUV with Jose, Taquisha, Ashleigh, and Connor and go to Lenox Mall, because who wants to stay at home on a holiday? And while the parents are taking the day off, they might as well run some errands.

Even if they stay at home, electricity bills are certainly not going to go down for anyone. Kids watch TV. They play video games and search the web. They constantly keep the refrigerator door open and they fool around with the AC. There will be no energy conservation. In fact, it will be wasted even more than usual.

Fourth, this sends the wrong message to everyone. It tells us that education gets a backseat to our love for oil. Georgia ranks at the bottom for education (I say this as a product of the public school system…so forgive any typos or grammatical errors :))–I wonder why?! Yeah yeah, you say I’m getting my panties in a wad over a lot of nothing, but come on. School is closed for two days…except, that is, for sports events. Jose can’t turn in his book report and Taquisha gets to forget her algebra lessons from last week, but Ashleigh gets to dance around in a cheerleading outfit while Connor scores a touchdown? WTF?

It also tells us that we can’t cope sensibly to a world without cheap gas. But this is not true. Purdue could have encouraged car pooling or walking (I would have loved to have been able to walk to school, but living twelve miles away made it difficult). Turn off the lights in the classrooms and let teachers hold class outside. Shut off the damn computers and make kids work their math problems on paper, like they used to do in the olden days. In the meantime, work with school officials on reducing energy consumption throughout the year. What about gradually replacing the Big Cheeses with natural gas-powered buses like MARTA uses? How about building skylights in some of the classrooms (like the ones in trailers)? What about providing incentives for teachers to carpool or take public transportation? Something else can be done besides canceling school.

Fifth, if I was living in Georgia right now and had faith that the governor knew what he was talking about, I might be tempted to panic buy. If it’s going to be so bad that school has to close, then lemme go down to the Chevron and buy up fifty gallons worth of gas. And let me encourage everyone I know to do likewise.

All I can hope for is that other governments have the sense to not follow suit.

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Hey, as a GA high school student, I fully support this plan of action.

The plan, mind you. Not the reasoning behind it.

But hey, two days off of school! Woo!

3

What if they decided to do 4 longer days with 3 day weekends? It wouldn’t save electricity but it would save gas.

4

I’m an Atlantan. Yes, it’s stupid, and yes, people are panic buying because of it. Just like they did 3 weeks ago.

I’m a transplant from Minnesota. I like Atlanta well enough, but a lot of the talk I used to hear about laid-back southern hospitality seems to be complete bunk. Minnesotans may be terse, but at least they ain’t nuts.

5

A few small school districts in Kentucky are going to 4-day weeks. They’re adding an hour to the school day and only going Monday-Thursday.

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I don’t supposed he called off any of the big football games this weekend, did he? But hey, what’s a few hundred thousand fans travelling to the games?

Wouldn’t you love to take a peek at the thermostat at the Governor’s mansion to see where the temp is set? One of our former governors asked Tennesseans to conserve energy by living with less that completely comfortable temperatures – a reasonable idea. Unfortunately, reporters caught him cheating at his own place.

We really need a sensible and united effort all across the country – not just to save money, but to conserve energy.

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Yes, I would be in favor of something like this.

8

monstro. Link’s not working.

Most school districts have inclement weather days planned into the schedule, where they have a set number of school days set aside each school year for missed days they don’t have to make up. Any more beyond those missed days and they do. Looks like Sonny’s tapping into that.

9

Try this one

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Atlanta is not a “southern” town. The entire three years I lived in Atlanta, I met one (1) person who was actually from Atlanta.

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This is Georgia! If we cannot ride buses to school, surely we have Jeebus horses to ride! Especially in Cobb County!

:::Straddling Bible:::

Giddyup! Whoo-haw!!

12

You are aware, sir, that riding a hobbyhorse won’t actually get you anywhere?

13

Very good point. Maybe that’s why this city’s so schizo.

And, to address Askia’s point, I know that Atlanta public schools have no built in snow (or hurricane) days. They, at least, will need to make these up - usually by eating into a couple of other days that were reserved as holidays. Maybe some other districts have 'em built in, though.

14

Really? I was an APS student (representin’!) and I remember having “contingency” days for snow. In the absence of snow cancellations, we would just have those days off. Maybe they stopped having them?

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I think they just stopped. I taught in an APS school for the last two years, and we had make-up days, though I believe they were more concerned with the teachers making up the time than the students. I think last year, for a hurricane day, we made it up by extending our day by an extra half-hour for awhile. Policy seemed to be a little unclear (suprise suprise).

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Well, I assume they disagree with you. Gas prices usually are lower in the winter, and are artificially high right now because of Katrina. So there will be savings.

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Atlanta itself is not solely to blame for the schizophrenia it exhibits.

Yes, it is a “young” growing city, with lots of folks (like me and my girlfriend) coming in from all over the country. The city itself has its progressive facets (cultural mecca, gay mecca, burgeoning music industry). It is an increasingly attractive city for technology. It holds the headquarters for Coca Cola, Turner Broadcasting, CNN, UPS, Home Depot, BellSouth, to name a few.

But…it is still surrounded by the rest of Georgia, and we are subject to the whims of our rural bretheren when it comes to matters of certain elected officials and state politics. Having the state capitol in Atlanta only heightens the jarring discrepancies between the attitudes of the city in general, vs the state in general.

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Well, I go to a school in Fulton county, and I know that there are days in our schedule that we normally get off, but if we have snow days, we don’t get those days off. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s how it’s supposed to work. We’ve only had one snow day the entire time I’ve been in high school, and another day that was cancelled because of horrible rainstorms. I’m pretty sure that’s the way it works, at least in Fulton county.

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Can’t speak for Atlanta public schools, but I know that Gwinnett County (just north of Atlanta) has 3 snow days built into the schedule for this year. My sister helps set up the calendar.

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http://www.clayton.k12.ga.us/administration/publicaffairs/emergencyinformation.asp

“Make-up days. Georgia law allows school systems to cancel up to four days of school for severe weather without requiring make-up days. [Italics mine. - Askia.] In the unlikely event that school is canceled more than four days, the [Clayton County] Board of Education will set make-up days as needed.”

As I said before, most school districts nationwide have inclement weather days planned into the schedule. In the event some other disaster occurs to close schools other than weather (like broken water pipes or the Columbine shootings or 9/11) those inclement weather days are automatically tapped if they hevan’t been used for that year.

I know this is the law in Georgia and therefore Atlanta, the state capital. I can’t imagine Atlanta Public Schools and the surrounding county districts not doing this.

Perdue must be gambling on a mild winter. I usually hate when politicians gamble.