I think it’s time to blog on this: Too many snow days.

As I hear it, everyone seems to agree that school districts order snow days — or delayed openings, as was the case today in my son’s district — much more frequently than when we were kids. It’s certainly my experience. Or is it simply my perception?

My neighbor, who is from the Czech Republic, laughed off today’s delay, noting that when he was a kid back home there would be a foot of snow on the ground and all the kids would pray that school would close. He says it happened once that he can remember.

In my own youth, I certainly remember walking to school amid snow banks with snow falling. In recent years, including the harsh winter of 2004, it became an issue, with district worrying about making up school time because of all the snow days. I stumbled upon “this story from cnn.com”:http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/02/09/snow.days.ap/index.html about one superintendent’s dilemma with it, and the fallout he endured.

But I couldn’t find a viable database that tracks the number of snow days per year. I thought this would end the debate once and for all, and determine whether schools are wimpier these days or whether it’s just our perception. One newspaper in Michigan took to the web last month and conducted “a reader poll”:http://blog.mlive.com/taking_notes/2007/12/school_snow_day_poll_too_many.html on the subject. Not exactly scientific, but it does make for some interesting results.

Of course, I’m not bringing this up with my son. Nothing a kid loves more than a snow day. It’s a hassle for us grown-ups, dealing with work and what to do with the kids and, particularly as a single parent, negotiating with the ex to reach a compromise on who takes time off, who doesn’t, whose turn it is to do so, etc. The big winner is always my son, who gets a day off. I just hope he remembers how good he had it as a kid.

Back-to-school sale. Those four words fill kids with an icy dread and the hollow pain of loss – the loss of a summer that has barely begun. With just four weeks of summer vacation gone and another six remaining, my oldest son spotted a back-to-school sale at a local store this weekend past. And tonight we saw our first back-to-school ad on TV, a commercial that prompted a mix of disgust and outrage in my youngest son: “Why don’t they just start the ads before we start vacation.”

I know parents are supposed to love the idea of kids going back to school, but on this issue, I side with the kids. Summer should feel endless, even if a kid’s day camp includes not only sports but school work because he is dealing with a learning disability, or the teen is taking an art class and participating in a college-prep program.

I side with the kids on snow storms, too. I love them. Not the two-inch frosting that scare suburban schools int shutting, but the foot-and-a-half storms that cause television and radio to hyperventilate about the latest threat to the region’s survival. Of course, newspapers (and our websites) are guilty, too. How many times do people need to read about shoppers rushing to hardware stores to buy salt and shovels in anticipation of the storm. But now who’s rushing the seasons.