October snowstorm causes school cancelations and delays

Kate Howard and Lily Kazemi
News Editors

On Monday, Nov. 7, New Canaan Public Schools will open on a regular, full day schedule. According to the New Canaan Office of Emergency Management, town-wide power restoration is near completion and they are currently in the process of servicing individual homes still without power.

Despite the significant power restoration progress made, Assistant Principal Ari Rothman said it is essential to be patient and accommodating to the needs of those individual students and families continued to be impacted by the effects of the storm. In recognition of this challenge, homework was not assigned on Wednesday or Thursday nights. “As frustrating as this week has been, it really is more important that people be safe,” he said. “So as an administrator, I appreciate everybody’s flexibility and I just hope things get back to normal at home.”

According to Superintendent of Schools David Abbey, the district was not expecting to have to cancel school due to snow so early on this year. “Although we had knowledge about this specific storm storm a couple of days in advance of it arriving, the general fact that we were going to have a snow storm in October was a surprise,” he said.

Even with disrupted school week, the first quarter is still set to end on Nov. 11. “The problem is we can’t keep eating away at the second quarter because we do not know, for instance, now where these two days will be made up,” Mr. Rothman said. “We can’t just keep moving the deadline.”

Having switched to making grades available electronically last year, Mr. Rothman stated how the use of PowerSchool Portal is convenient in this situation. “Luckily, since we went online with the portal, getting quarter grades to student literally takes hours instead of days,” he said.

Because of the storm, the NCHS production of Almost, Maine set to take place this past Saturday was postponed to Nov. 4 at 7:30 p.m. “It’s actually a little bit funny,” junior Alyssa Thompson said. “It was strange doing a play set in deep winter when it was moderate fall, but now, we could do the whole play outside.We’re not really phased after having the last night of [The Mystery of Edwin Drood] postponed two years ago. This is the nature of theatre. But the show must go on. The most important thing is that when we do have a closing night, we have a good supporting audience.”

Check back for updates regarding events and the end of the first quarter.

Photos by Kelly Saiz