Killer cold

Elijah Zawatsky
January 30, 2014

The letter to the editor writer in question pointed out that classes are not outside, and that if students would “go put a scarf on and do what you’re supposed to” then they would have no problem with the cold weather.

This writer so blindly overlooks the many issues that can still arise from the severe cold. There are over 100 different school districts in the Greater Cincinnati area.

In total there are 10’s of 1000’s of school children that wake up each morning to go to school.

Snow day picture
Ice and snow on the roads that has melted into water from the heat of cars can very easily refreeze in the subzero temperatures forming black ice. This can cause adverse driving conditions and can very easily cause a wreck. Buses full of school children have an especially difficult time traversing this terrain. Photo courtesy of Eli Zawatsky

According to the National Weather Service Windchill chart, at -10 degrees with a wind-chill of 35 (the temperatures reached in Cincinnati on the morning of Jan 7), it only takes 10 minutes to get frostbite.

According to the Baltimore Sun Newspaper, nationally, 20 to 30 percent of schoolchildren walk to school. Every single one of those children would have been at severe risk of frostbite while walking to school on both the mornings of Jan 6 and 7.

But who cares? If the taxpayers are paying, children should be in school, regardless of frostbite. At least, that is what the writer in question seems to think.

This writer must be uninformed of the long-lasting complications that often arise from frostbite and the amputations that are often needed as a result of just 10 minutes in the cold.

And frostbite was not the only issue that could have occurred on the mornings of Jan 6 and 7. The extreme cold, coupled with a layer of snow and ice blanketing the Cincinnati area left from a few days earlier, created unreasonably difficult driving conditions.

If a bus full of school children had fallen prey to the icy weather conditions many lives be at risk in the crash, And millions of tax dollars would potentially be lost in the possible resulting law suit.

So before criticizing the judgment of school boards across the city, angry tax payers need to think with some rationality.

They need to ask themselves, if the decision were theirs, would they really be willing to risk the lives of 1000’s of school children and send them out into the bone chilling weather.