Published in the Boston Globe, circa 2000
In winter, there is only one thing that Superintendents think about. Snow. We continue to keep half an eye on budgets, test scores, and policies, but the other eye and a half is firmly fixed on the weather map. This is because among the hundreds of critical decisions we make on a weekly basis, calling off school for a snow day is as Mt Everest is to the gentle slopes of Blue Hill. How we handle this decision reveals what we are made of. It is the ultimate existential test. It is how we measure each other, and ourselves. (I’m feeling ill.)
It also determines what everyone else thinks of us. In fact, it’s the only thing most people think of us at all. A year or so ago, I had occasion to attend a meeting with the now-embattled Larry Summers and several of my colleagues, and he mentioned that throughout his entire elementary and secondary educational career, his only impression of, and judgment about, the school Superintendent had to do with decisions the guy made about snow days. That’s everyone’s impression. Far and wide, across the land, Superintendents are known by hundreds and hundreds of thousands of students and parents only by virtue of being the Oz-like figure behind the curtain who calls snow days, and is otherwise a complete cipher.
Imagine if the worth of your entire career were measured by decisions you had to make, alone, at four in the morning, with limited information, that involved assessing risks to children. (I’m feeling even more ill.) I once worked for a Superintendent who truly hated facing decisions about snow days. You couldn’t really even joke around with him about the subject. The man would break out in hives when a low pressure area developed off the coast of Seattle, because he knew in a matter of days it could turn into a blizzard here on the east coast. At his retirement party, his wife told a story about him staring out of his window on a winter’s night, phone at the ready to make the fateful call, and saying “Honey, it’s pure white out there. I’ve got to call it off,”to which she responded “Bob, lift the shade.”
The steady popularity of books about the Cuban Missile Crisis suggests that the public is in some way fascinated by the detailed anatomy of critical decisions, so I feel justified in lifting the curtain of professional discretion and providing a behind the scenes look at the hows, whys, and whens of the snow day decision-making process. It’s not for the faint of heart, and some material is being withheld for reasons of national security. (Example: I can’t reveal the code we use to call radio and television stations. But not for the reason you think. The reason I can’t reveal it is because there is only one individual in a system trusted with knowing the secret code, and it isn’t me.)
Here, then, is what happens prior to the fateful call to the media.
When any hint of snow is in the air, the Superintendent suddenly becomes very popular around the office. “How are you doing? Say, what are you thinking about the weather tomorrow?” This is a very hard question to answer honestly, because the truth is that what we are thinking about isn’t whether we’ll have to make a decision, but whether we will blow the decision, leaving, for example, our system the only one closed on a sunny, mild, dry day. Or vice-versa. When there is snow in the air, students don’t ask questions, they simply state their wishes, using the declarative rather than the interrogative voice: “No way we’re having school tomorrow,” or “You should just decide now and save yourself the trouble.”
We generally have until a little after five a.m. to lay our cards down. That’s when you have to catch the media if you want to be sure to get listed on the television scroll. But once they’re layed, they’re played. Each of us has a little circle of friends, other Superintendents, who stay in close touch in the early morning hours when it’s snowing out. (I pick the people I callboth on the basis of geographical contiguity and how respectable they are. I figure it’s kind of good, if I make a really stupid decision, to have followed the lead of someone else who has a little respectability. In any case, you don’t want to go down alone.) This is an oddgroup of friends, accustomed to talking to each other only when it’s dark and snowy out. Someone once presented me with the image ofall of us, middle-aged administrators, lonely in our kitchens in the early morning hours, shivering in our bathrobes, bare white legs agleam , talking to each other in hushed tones, saying things like “Well, what are you going to do?” “I don’t know, have you heard what anybody else is doing?” “Not yet, but will you call me when you’ve decided?” “Right, and I’m going to call Bill and see what he’s thinking.” It is from the crucible of these conversations that the crucial decision about whether or not to cancel school is forged.
To fully enlist your sympathies, let me throw a little more drama into the equation. As Superintendent, you know that you aren’t the only one awake. There are hundreds, often thousands, of adults and kids waiting by the phone or television, begging, praying, almost experiencing religious conversions in the hopes that you’ll call school off. Now, a snow day is a totally and uniquely wonderful thing, unmatched in any other arena of human existence. It is when the world stops, when obligations are put off, when an unexpected treasure comes, literally, out of the blue in the form of a free day. And it’s up to us to decide whether to fulfill these dreams or not. But Superintendents are not allowed this form of pure joy, because we are in the terrible position (this takes on the proportions of a Greek drama) of having the power to grant ourselves the gift whose value only derives from its being a surprise. But as we can’t surprise ourselves, we can never fully enjoy the gift.
Now are you beginning to understand what we’re dealing with here? To sum up, this is high-pressure work, intensely lonely, done in the dark of night, the very essence of top-down management, one man or woman, one decision, countless lives affected It’s so grindingly solitary that, if I could find out the code, I’d be tempted to publish it here so that the decision could be made a little more democratically.