The snowstorm that began on January 6, 2025, dumped the most snow on record in Virginia since 2022. Northern Virginia got around five to eleven inches of snow which is two thirds of our yearly average in the first week of the year. Many counties in the area sent out school closure announcements on January 5th, including Fairfax and Alexandria due to forecasted weather. The storm lasted one day, but many schools remained closed for most of the week.
Unlike public schools, St. Stephen’s St. Agnes School has to account for the students and teachers who live in different counties, when deciding on snow days. Director of Communications, Mrs. Desautels explains “We have buses that run routes all over. So we have to be very aware of what the road conditions are, not just in Alexandria, but also where all of our transportation are, because if we can’t get kids here, we shouldn’t be open, right? That’s why public schools close.”
When asked what goes into the decision to close schools for a snow day, Mrs. Desautels said, “the most important factors, honestly, are road conditions and whether our campuses are ready for cars and people.”
St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes campuses were closed through January 8th, but after one snow day, school continued for the students. Since Zoom took off, Distance Learning has become a popular option for schools when conditions make going in person difficult. SSSAS’s current system is to have one day of school off for a snow day and then immediately transfer to distance learning. Many other schools in the area have a different system, giving them several snow days: Loudon County has fifteen snow days, Alexandria City has five, and Fairfax County has eleven. This has sparked the question of how many snow days should SSSAS have before transferring to distance learning?
When asked how many snow days the school should have Beza Abel ‘27 argued, “I think we should have three, because I feel like a lot of schools have that.”
Ella Jakupovic ‘26 agrees saying, “I think we should have like four or five because I think we should have an entire school week, one day is just not enough.”
In contrast Olivia Pla ‘26 said, “I think one day is enough. I know with other schools in our area, they had three snow days, but I think having one real snow day is pretty good.”
Despite the school’s effort to continue classes virtually, the productivity is debated. When asked whether or not they found distance learning to be effective Beza said, “Not really, because most of the teachers just have you do homework or classwork.”
Ella agreed that distance learning was ineffective. She described her experience as, “I felt zoned out the entire time. I don’t think I could focus at all.”
Olivia did find distance learning somewhat useful. “For some of my classes, we did meet on Zoom and had a class discussion. In others we were assigned asynchronous work. I feel like for at least two or three of my classes, we didn’t really have any work.”
While Zoom is meant to be a helpful way to have students learn online, there was a lack of progress made during Distance Learning. Olivia thinks this could be due to having the transition to distance learning right after winter break. Beza adds that she thinks, “we should have had the day off, because I didn’t really see the point.” Although there was some dissent among the students, Olivia does insist, “I don’t feel like distance learning was completely pointless!”
