In the past two weeks, Fairfax County Public Schools have been closed twice and delayed three times. The delays on Jan. 7 and 9 as well as the closing on Jan. 8 were because of legitimate concern for student safety.

However, along with these closings and delays, there were also days where school was closed that students and teachers thought it should not have been and days where school wasn’t closed when it should have been.

Most recently (as of publication), school was cancelled on Jan. 14 due to expected freezing rain. However, no precipitation occurred that day, leading to a wasted day of school.

“I definitely felt like school should not have been cancelled,” junior Jeffrey Montanas

said. “ But it was nice. I’m not complaining. I was living the life.”

However, the unnecessary snow day was not all fun and games.

“It was nice and all, I had a lot of fun,” junior Phillip Delcore said. “But it put me behind in a lot of my Red Day classes.”

Missing classes can have a huge effect on the course and the speed with which the instructor has to go over the material.

“It’s been hard for my [Red Day] classes to catch up,” English teacher Julia Hanneman said. “They’ve already missed two class periods.”

FCPS could be forced to make more important and difficult decisions in the upcoming week due to an increased chance of winter weather and declining temperatures.

Students and teachers can look forward to accumulating snow from Thursday Jan. 22 into Saturday Jan. 24.

The problem is, FCPS has proven that they cannot be trusted when deciding whether or not to cancel school, as can be seen by the debacle of Jan. 6, when FCPS did not cancel school despite moderate snowfall and severely iced roads.

This caused many students to struggle with getting to school on time.

“I got stopped behind a bus that was stuck and I had to turn around,” senior Lee Hayes said. “Then, on my way, I hit a curb because it was too icy and I was fishtailing. It was definitely too dangerous to be driving to school.”

“It [school] should have been cancelled because the roads were too treacherous to be driving on,” Hanneman said. “Especially for high school students, who are probably not the most experienced drivers.

After FCPS decided not to cancel schools on Jan. 6, students took to Twitter to voice their opinions, anger and concern about the condition of the roads. AHS students also took the time to post photographs of accidents and traffic backups on their way to school.

The large outcry on Twitter spurred the use of the hashtag, #CloseFCPS.

The hashtag was the number one trending hashtag in the United States as of 6:30 a.m. Later in the day, #CloseFCPS would reach number two on the worldwide trending chart.

Not only were students affected by the snow, teachers had trouble getting to school as well.

“Myself, my wheels spun just trying to get out of my neighborhood. At one point, I was driving 25 miles per hour on I-95,” Hanneman said.

“I had some car troubles this morning, so I was forced to take the Metro Bus,” Physics teacher David Tyndall said. “But Medford Road was still icy, so when I was getting off, I slipped and fell.”

Throughout the day, FCPS released a number of statements apologizing for the events of the day.

One statement apologized for any “difficulties” that had been caused by the weather, and went on to attempt to justify the decision that was made to keep schools open.

“I was really upset that the schools were open,” senior Doreen Amoaful said. “Clearly there was snow on the ground, and it was very possible that people could get injured coming. I just think FCPS made a bad decision.”

Hopefully, FCPS will manage to make the right decision when the time comes.