Leadership Lite
School Administrator, January 2018


Not Your Mundane Snow Closure Call
The bitter cold of winter, when the elements are harshest, brings out the finest comedic tendencies in school leaders’ messaging skills. Consider these creative means of communicating with the public about snow day closures. (All took place in the past 12 months.)

IN WEEHAWKEN, N.J., Superintendent Robert Zywicki created and distributed a series of three short videos about a two-day closure. One showed him in Cro-Magnon attire, wearing a mammoth hair cloak and shaggy wig with an icy ridge backdrop. Another had Zywicki delivering his message before a snowy mountainside, dressed in a ski jacket emblazoned with Weehawken logos.

IN STOKES COUNTY, N.C., Superintendent Brad Rice announced the next day’s closing of schools by writing a parody of Josh Turner’s “Your Man” and posted the video to the school district’s Facebook page, where it attracted 20,000 views in just a few hours.

IN SCHAUMBURG, ILL., District 211 Superintendent Dan Cates teamed up with a group of Schaumburg high schoolers to create a music video, “I Want a Cold Day.” It was set to the tune of a Backstreet Boys song that was probably older than any of the singing students.

IN ROCHESTER, MASS., Aaron Polansky, superintendent of the Old Colony Regional Vocational Technical High School, created a YouTube video to call off school, with the help of several high schoolers who joined him in a singing spoof of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Polansky’s lyrics referenced the school’s cosmetology students who missed out for weather reasons on a $2,000 trip to the International Beauty Show in New York City.

IN CLINTON, MASS., Superintendent Terry Ingano spun his own snow day robocall to students and parents with a version of Annie’s “Tomorrow” with lyrics that included this refrain: “The snow will come down tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomor-row, there’ll be snow. Just thinking about tomorrow, all that snow and that ice and that sorrow.” (Ingano ended on a sour note, though: A reminder that each snow day results in an additional day of school in June.)

IN O’NEILL, NEB., Superintendent Amy Shane modified the lyrics to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” and used her own vocals to deliver her school-closing announcement. (Shane’s singing prompted the O’Neill Police Department to answer the snow song challenge with one officer singing “I Stayed Out All Night” to the melody of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.”)

IN BATH, OHIO, Superintendent Matt Montgomery of the Revere Local Schools conducted a snow day contest, with gift cards as prizes, for students’ tweets of Photoshopped images showing him in snowy scenes. One student posted a photo of the superintendent standing deep in a snowbank next to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

IN NORDONIA HILLS, OHIO, Superintendent Joe Clark, mindful of the harsh treatment he receives whenever he does not close school on a wintry day, encouraged students in his school district to tweet a photo showing them engaged in a productive or educational activity on a snow day he did call. The Twitter hashtag to use: #NoSnowJoe.

SOURCES: New Jersey Advance Media; WGHP, High Point, N.C.; The Daily Herald, Arlington Heights, Ill.; ABC News; Masslive.com; KMTV, Omaha, Neb.; and Beacon Journal, Akron, Ohio

 

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.