As glistening snowflakes drift through the grey-blue skies and temperatures plummet to sub-zero levels, students across the metro wait for the highly anticipated call. Kids huddle around each other’s phones waiting for the announcement, and finally, the Instagram page updates and shows a… two-hour late start?

In 2019, Millard Public Schools introduced the two-hour late start option as an alternative to the traditional snow day. The district describes the two-hour late start as a way to “let the sun come up, the roads warm up, and to avoid rush hour traffic.” While this sounds good in theory, this explanation does not explain the disruption this delay causes for both students and parents.

The two-hour late start may not have a huge impact on the high school students who drive themselves to school, but it creates a massive inconvenience for parents who work. Many parents drop off their children before they go to work themselves, and pushing the school start time back to 10 a.m. produces a large disruption in the day. Most families do not have the ability to drop everything to arrange transportation for their children at such a late notice.

Additionally, class lengths are reduced to impossibly short time periods, particularly at Millard North, where classes only take place in 30 minute slots during late start days. It is inconceivable that any real learning can take place during such a short interval, especially when students and teachers tend to have around a five minute window at the beginning and end of class to settle in and pack up respectively. While there are undeniable benefits of hosting classes face-to-face, this extremely miniscule amount of instructional time is truly cutting into what could have been a more productive e-learning experience at home, as students would have the full day to focus on their assignments, rather than be forced into rapidly paced windows of in-person classes.

Late starts also create a wasted day for academy students, as they are unable to report to their classes on these occasions. Instead, they complete work online at their home school, which could more easily be done at home

In many cases, the reason for the late start may not have subsided by the time school began. During the most recent late start, temperatures were still dangerously low at 10 a.m., and many students chose not to attend for this reason. This creates extra work for teachers, as they have to keep up with students who decided to stay home, and still work with those who came to school.

It seems unfair that teachers must double their workload to accommodate the disturbances that late starts create inside the classroom.

Overall, late starts create more disruptions, missing work, and confusion for students and parents alike. It is difficult to get students to school while parents are also juggling their own work and personal commitments. Additionally, class lengths become so short that there is barely enough time for any genuine learning for the few students who do show up on these days. The district should primarily focus on using e-learning days during inclement weather circumstances, as they allow students to focus on school work without creating a disturbance in their learning experience.