I didn’t get the news that you’d cancelled school last Thursday until my boy was already gone for more than an hour … we sent him packing shortly before sun-up, because he had a long journey ahead of him. We live on the far south end of town, but he goes to school near Old Town and the wife and I knew that if he were to arrive punctually for classes, he’d need a good four-hour head start. As you may know, it snowed a bit the day before and for some damned reason neither the Ford Explorer nor the Toyota 4Runner managed to ram through the three-foot wall of frozen snow at the foot of the driveway, even after getting a nice tire-smoking head start from within the garage. I’m taking both of those cheap vehicles to have their four-wheel-drive inspected, as soon as the front yard melts enough for their wheels to touch the ground again.

Anyway, we figured that since you weren’t intimidated by the weather on Wednesday, Thursday would surely be no different. After all, it was supposed to stop snowing on Thursday and who ever heard of a school cancellation when the weather was forecast to improve?

Oh sure, the kid whined a bit about wanting a “snow day” like every other student in Colorado, whether they were in preschool or college. But I reminded him that not every other kid attends school in the Poudre School District.

“Mr. Wilson didn’t cancel school because he knows how to build character, son. He’s from Oregon,” I told him. “Do you think the pioneers who founded Fort Collins had ‘snow days?’”

So we stuffed his backpack with his homework, some emergency flares, plenty of water, a flashlight, some waterproof matches and a .22 rifle in case he had to hunker down and shoot himself a few squirrels. I could tell he was proud to be taking on this challenge you’d presented him with, even through the tears, which were sort of frozen to his face. Since he’s only in the fourth grade, my Yukon snowshoes were a bit big on him … he managed about four or five steps before taking a headfirst digger. Boy that snow was deep! We let him flail around on his own until he managed to teeter to his feet again. How else was he going to learn? We figured you’d approve.

Imagine my disappointment to learn much later that you’d canceled school! At first I thought it was a joke, and then I feared that you’d suffered a coup at the hands of some spineless weakling who didn’t like the thought of digging his car out of a five-foot snow drift, even if it was for the purpose of educating our children. But then I read the online version of the Coloradoan (even THEY were apparently too cowed to get out there and deliver the paper, them and my postman … what’s this city coming to?) and found out that it was true, that you’d caved in to a cabal of whiny parents who were miffed at YOU because THEY couldn’t navigate their cars through snow. OK, so it was falling at an inch a minute and propelled by 35 mile per hour winds, but still. Give me a break.

The point is, I’m disappointed that you didn’t stick to your guns … maybe if there’d been more superintendents like you in PSD’s past, I would have gotten my newspaper and my mail last week, “snow days” be damned. Nothing like a little adversity to shore up one’s mettle. I’m sure my son will agree, once he returns home.

Warm regards,

Greg Campbell