Splitsville in HoCo

Today’s post begins with a tweet from the Howard CountyTimes:

The decision on whether to activate a virtual instruction day would lie with Superintendent Michael Martirano, who said he prefers the virtual instruction plan over extending the school year into late June.

It’s not about the tweet.

It contains a link to an article about potential changes to inclement weather school cancellations.

Will traditional snow days go away in Howard County schools, with virtual learning options? Not exactly.(Ethan Ehrenhaft, Baltimore Sun)

It’s not about the article.

It’s about this response to the tweet and the article.

Split the county.

Wait, what? Your first response to a story about snow days is “split the county”?

How would you split it exactly? Straight down the middle? Western Howard County/Everyone else? Columbia/Everyone else? Walkers vs. those who take the bus?

The Howard County School system covers a fairly large geographical area. They have to take into consideration the weather and road conditions throughout the region. Sometimes that looks like canceling school on a day where it’s hazardous in some areas but not in others. That can be frustrating.

So let’s just split the county. That’ll fix it.

I understand the thought process behind this argument but reading the words gave me a chill.

Aren’t we split enough already? Don’t we read almost daily the words of someone justifying their own particular divisions? Railing for special treatment for “people like us” while tuning out the needs and humanity of “those people”?

I’m about to go off the rails here, aren’t I?

What do you think? Will splitting the county solve the problem of snow days? Or - - if you’ll pardon my choice of words - - does it put us on a slippery slope of using division to benefit some and disenfranchise others?

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