I have a new piece out, on a topic close to my heart, and the Minnesota Reformer:

Late last year, an email arrived in my in-box from the Minneapolis Public Schools, with an odd heading: “We’ve changed how we handle winter weather.” 

I read on:

Earlier this year, the Minneapolis Board of Education approved an e-learning plan for our schools. That means that MPS no longer has to cancel school due to bad weather.

Were they talking about snow days? They didn’t say snow days.

While this likely won’t be much of a change for the foreseeable future due to COVID-19, it will be once we can return to in-person learning, no matter when that is.

The email did not say, “We are canceling snow days.” It didn’t even use the word, “snow day.” But as I parsed the anodyne, bureaucratic language (designed to obscure, not clarify), it sure seemed like that’s what they were saying: Whenever it snowed, it would be like a little slice of pandemic all over again. 

Read the rest here.