Third day in a row of no school because of the weather. Although the temps have been quite frigid and the snow that blew in on Tuesday was pretty intense, I don't think I remember EVER being let out for snow like this when I was a kid. At first I asked myself if this was just a result of worsening weather conditions, but I am pretty sure we had heavy snowfalls and subzero windchill factors when I was a kid as well. Are we as a race becoming "soft"? Do we live in such a technologically controlled environment that we simply can't handle the out of doors? Having a home in which there is no heat or air conditioning is practically unheard of anymore. My elementary school (and middle and high school for that matter) did not have air conditioning. The heat for the building consisted of a boiler room that fed into radiators placed in each room. If your desk was near the radiator, you were sweating through out the day. If you were closer to the door of the classroom on the opposite wall of the radiator, you froze. That was just the way it was. We dealt with it, we didn't complain (okay, not much anyway), we simply didn't know any different. I remember my mom telling me on very cold mornings to make sure and wear my hat, gloves and scarf when I went to the bus stop. She would emphasize the morning news estimates of windchill factors and tell me that exposed skin could develop frostbite in a matter of minutes. But the point of the story is, I walked to the bus stop. I stood there in the freezing cold and waited for the bus to show up, and I went to school. Toughen up Superintendent. Let the kids go. They will be okay, and while they are there, they might actually learn something.