A heavy snowstorm covered the Peddie campus on Jan. 27, granting members of the community a snow day.

A snow day at Peddie is a rare occurrence for many, with a usual frequency of once a year. But, in the wake of last year’s snow season, the administration had to make a change to the policy in order to avoid tacking on additional days to the school year.

In response to last year, Associate Head of School Catherine Rodrigue, Headmaster Peter Quinn and Assistant Head of Student Life Melanie Clements came up with the idea of flex days. These flex days are Saturday classes that would normally be off, but in the event of a snow day or another instance of inclement weather, these days would hold class.

“I think it’s a necessary preparation for this kind of weather,” Winston Kung ’15 said. “It’s hard
for day students to come to school, and it’s hard for [people on campus] to walk [around].”

In terms of planning around classes, snow days provide a difficult challenge for teachers, with assigned work having to be pushed back further. But they can also provide some respite during the winter months, both for students and faculty.

“I think [the snow days] break up the winter a little bit, mainly for the students, but also for the faculty,” Spanish and French teacher David Pagano stated. “I think [they] present some challenges in that the work must continue to be done.”

Based on the responses from students and teachers, the flex days seem more practical than adding on days at the end of the school year.

“Obviously I don’t want to have school on Saturday, but it’s better than adding on days to our summer,” Michael Deiner ’15 said about the policy. “It’s seeing the long-term goal.”

Even though there was one snow day, students and faculty will still have the flex day on Feb. 21 off from school, unless there is another snow day.

“We made a decision that if we lose another day to snow, then we will use that flex day, but we will not use that flex day for one missed snow day,” Rodrigue said.