Leadership Lite
School Administrator, February 2017


A Poet’s Inspiration
The author has been a passionate member of a monthly poetry group for a decade. She composed the accompanying poem–-in free verse lyric style where a line appears unfinished at the end of one stanza but concludes in the next--in the aftermath of a major snow storm last winter that blanketed the Northeast. “It was on my mind -- and everyone else’s!” she quipped.


A Snow Day?
BY NANCY LUBARSKY

Long before sunrise, school leaders

confer by phone over what will happen

in a few hours. Their only data source –

the Weather Channel and local

meteorologists. The Vanna Whites

of weather, stretch their arms across

swathes of color (projected on green


screens) that they see only from off

camera monitors. Cartoon-like maps

repeat patterns of future precipitation.

Weather icons engage in combat.

The experts proclaim what they will

never be sure of. Desperate texts fly

back and forth. To close or not to close?


Do we risk the wrath of those who rush to

get children to school and then onto work,

or the ones who will miss lunch or tennis

plans? And what about make-up days? Will

graduation be postponed? Will vacations

be whittled down, rearranged? We phone

the police and the local DPW to affirm, but


out their windows roads are dry. Weather

chatterers insist that freezing rain or snow

will fall precisely when busses leave the

depot. Will one of us finally decide so

others may follow? Soon the auto dialers

hum. 6 AM – the flakes arrive in a steady

stream, but will they stick?


Nancy Lubarsky is superintendent of the Mountainside School District in Mountainside, N.J. E-mail: nlubarsky@mountainsideschools.org



Short, humorous anecdotes, quips, quotations and malapropisms for this column relating to school district administration should be addressed to: Editor, School Administrator, 1615 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314. Fax: 703-841-1543. E-mail: magazine@aasa.org. Upon request, names may be withheld in print.