The start of the semester has been a complete mess, all thanks to the consecutive winter storms that have pummelled the state. 

Wake County called for 4 school days over the past two weeks to become remote learning days, while 3 others had two-hour delays.  

However, what is the point of these delays?  

WCPSS puts these delays in place following freezing, sometimes snowy nights. Leesville’s 7:25 a.m. starts raise the risk of roads being icy, posing a danger to students trying to drive to school. 

The snowy threat is even greater to buses, which struggle to navigate unsalted neighbourhood streets.  

The district only allows schools to have 5 remote days per year. With 3 of them already being used, it puts the school sysemtin a difficult position: either use up all of their available remote days, or have students come into class with a delay.  

Even then, these delays come off as somewhat unnecessary.  The snow on Sunday had completely melted by Tuesday morning, yet a 2-hour delay was still instated for the following day. 

Many students have viewed the delays as a good thing, taking advantage of the extra time given to sleep in.  One could raise the question of why school doesn’t consistently start at 9:25 every day. 

 “I feel like we already have a 30-minute period where we don’t do much in each class.  I don’t think it changes much (missing 2 hours per day),” said Evan Eaton, a Junior.

However, teachers have emphasised how strenuous these delays can be for their own schedules. In more complex classes, such as AP’s, every minute of class time is of value. Students can easily fall behind when classwork is jam-packed into a shorter class period.

All in all, these two weeks of cancellations and delays are extremely rare — as the weather warms up, it’s doubtful that we will have another 9:25 start to school.