NYC public schools will not have a snow day Monday, officials say

New York City public school students will not have a snow day Monday despite this weekend's expected storm, officials said. 

Students and parents will find out whether classes Monday will be held virtually or in-person by noon on Sunday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Friday. 

"I have to apologize to the students that were hoping for a different answer, for a traditional snow day. That will not be the case," Mamdani said. 

"In either case, learning will continue in an environment that the city deems safe," Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said. 

PSAL events will be canceled Sunday. 

Last time NYC went all-remote turned into a debacle

The last time the city went fully remote resulted in a debacle due to the surge of students signing on at the same time, which overloaded the system. Samuels said "that day that will live in infamy," and said the city is prepared should they need to do it again this coming Monday. 

"I want to say very clearly we have prepared in numerous ways for what might be a pivot to remote for next week, and we've stress tested the system both in person with students logging and, as well, we've had simulations," Samuels said. "We now have the capacity of having a million logging in at the same time within 60 seconds. We now have that." 

Samuels said he's "very, very confident" the program will be successful, if needed. 

Snow day "one of life's rare joys," but... 

Mamdani was whimsical about the absence of a snow day. 

"I'm not going to contend that a snow day is not one of life's rare joys. I will tell you that growing up in the city, it was one of my favorite memories," Mamdani said. "To be very clear and direct with New Yorkers, we are also bound by state law that requires 180 days of instruction. And as previous administrations have added additional holidays into the school calendar, it leaves our school calendar without any flexibility for the potential of a lack of an educational day." 

So if Mamdani had the flexibility to give the kids a snow day, would he?

"I will not stand here and say that it's the end of anything. I will tell you that for Monday, however, these are the two options," Mamdani said. 

"Reimagining what the snow day looks like"

Samuels said "there are benefits to remote learning." 

"I might offer that folks might begin to think about this as reimagining what the snow day looks like. No one is asking kids to be on a device for six hours and 20 minutes. So we have to be flexible in our approach. Some learning will be synchronous. Some will be asynchronous. You can still have your hot chocolate, you can still go out and enjoy the snow, but we really want to make sure that, especially since the pandemic, our children have missed more school than they did before. And we want to make sure that instruction continues, even when it's disrupted, or attempted to be disrupted, by weather patterns," Samuels said.