The alarm on your nightstand goes off, and you slowly force yourself out of bed to turn it off. You make your way to the closest window you can find, and are pleased by the snow that is still falling and is now fully covering the ground. Then you travel to the television and turn on the news. You anxiously wait as the name of each Virginia school district floats by the bottom of the screen. Finally, the caption gliding across the screen announces that all Fairfax County public schools are closed.
This is how some AHS students spent the begging of their morning yesterday, February 3. Students were able to find out that school was closed due to the potentially hazardous snow by watching the news, going online, checking their e-mails, Facebooks, Twitters, or asking their parents or another source. FCPS also announced that since all of the snow days for the year have been used, the makeup day will be Monday, February 15, Presidents’ Day.
The makeup day leaves some families who have already scheduled plans for this anticipated three day weekend with a dilemma. However, they are not the only ones having problems with the snow. Some extracurricular activities at AHS have also lost some practice time and cancelled games because of the snow’s effects this year.
Junior Allie Norris, a member of the colorguard, said, “at first, the snow gave us too long of a break, so we started our work late. And because of the closing of after school events Tuesday, we kinda fell further behind. Also it makes everything a little bit harder to have new rookies [new members] because then time has to be taken to get them to learn the basics and make sure they understand it.”
Sophomore cheerleader Jessica Campanilla has also lost valuable practice time. “For cheerleading it gives us less time to prep for the wrestling matches we’re cheering for on Friday. And I had no power for like twenty minutes and couldn’t do my homework,” said Campanilla.
Senior Chris Hall, a runner on the winter track team, hasn’t been as dramatically impacted. “It hasn’t really affected the track team, but it’s harder to get good traction on the actual track,” said Hall.
