Hoboken: If Snow Disrupts School, We'll Go Remote (UPDATED)

HOBOKEN, NJ — As schools around the country become more adept at delivering lessons remotely, students face uncertainty as to whether the "Snow Days" of yore may become exactly that: A thing of the past.

Forecasters have issued a winter storm watch for 12 of 21 New Jersey counties for this week, but what about for Hoboken specifically?

Accuweather said that for Monday, the city will get just a mix of rain and snow, but on Wednesday, the city will get an initial 1-3 inches in the afternoon and accumulate a total of 6 to 10 inches through Wednesday night, with "near blizzard conditions."

Sunday night, Hoboken Schools Superintendent Christine Johnson announced that if the district needs to close this week for inclement weather, the schools will shift to remote learning. She later clarified the policy in an email to Patch.

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Johnson wrote in a district newsletter on Sunday, "The mild weather was a nice surprise. However, it appears that we may be in for a bit of storm mid-week. If our district needs to close as a result of inclement weather and internet connections are not disrupted, families will be notified and we will shift to remote learning."

Johnson clarified later in an email, "It is highly unlikely that a storm will knock out internet access to the city. Because our snow days get added to the end of the calendar, we will take each snow day one at a time. We will assess remote attendance and participation during the first shift to remote due to snow. If it shows high attendance and participation, we will continue that route, as long as the storm does not affect the internet."

She added, "If attendance and participation is low, we may opt to utilize a different strategy by taking the snow day and adding a school day to the end of the year."

The National Weather Service has released maps of where they expect the worst conditions in New Jersey.

Several other North Jersey districts shared their policies over the weekend.

This past Friday night, another North Jersey district, Millburn, shared their Snow Day policy with families. That district had started the year with more than a month of remote learning.

Millburn Superintendent Christine Burton wrote, "Under the governor’s executive order that allowed schools to meet the minimum 180-day school year requirement by permitting the use of virtual or remote instruction, school districts can apply this same order to days on which remote instruction is necessary due to inclement weather ...[For Snow Days] we have two “emergency closing days” built into the 2020-2021 school calendar. For the first two days all schools will be closed for 'traditional' snow days." Extra days will come out of Spring Break.

Watch Hoboken Patch for up-to-date weather and school information. Got weather photos or local news to share? Email caren.lissner@patch.com.

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