As the snow starts to buries cars and the roads freeze, Pembroke schools have the opportunity to cancel school and have students do their school work at home. This is called a “Blizzard Bag” day, and they were designed to avoid making up the school days in June and potentially pushing back the graduation date for seniors. 

When a Blizzard Bag day is called, teachers must post assignments for their classes on the Google Classroom, and at least 80 percent of our district needs to complete their assignments to have the day count as an actual school day.

“Blizzard bags can be beneficial if assigned properly,” senior Logan Raymond said. “Instead of adding on more assignments, on top of all the homework or studying, teachers should assign small amounts of work that only take up to 30 minutes to complete.”

Students should not have to be sitting in front of a computer all day doing work, Raymond added. “It’s  a snow day and students should be able to relax or at least enjoy half of the day off,” he said.

Pembroke schools have been using Blizzard Bags for years now, but each time a day is called the percentage of the completion fluctuates. 

“Roughly around 85 percent of my students turned in their blizzard bags and only like 15 percent did not,” science teacher Mr Reil said.

Some students have concerns about the equity of Blizzard Bags.

“Since we need to reach a certain percentage, it can’t be more difficult to meet the goal, which is unfair to those who did the assignments because we have to make that day up anyway,” said senior Cameryn Gagne.

Teachers believe that most of the students who don’t complete the Blizzard Bags because they don’t like doing homework.

Others have expressed that they will only do work that is relevant or not too time-consuming.

“If my teachers give me a lot of work I’m not doing it,” junior Michael Perkins said. 

Still, other students said it really depends on whether the assignment is useful to that specific course.

“Some teachers assign useless Blizzard Bags and others assign some that are vital to our next class, so it really depends on the assignment whether it’s beneficial or not,” said senior Jade Pescinski.

Some teachers, however, believe that the Blizzard Bag assignments should take some time to complete.

“You’re making up a six-hour day so the assignments should take almost as long as a normal class period” foreign language teacher Ms. Ferguson said. “My assignments probably took about 45 minuets for my students to complete.”

Blizzard bags themselves are not the enemy, it completely depends on what work the teacher decides to assign. Many students also believe that teachers should have guidelines to go by for the work.

Other teachers said the assignment should be based on the next class.

“In class, there is usually more than one part to the assignment so it should be the same for Blizzard Bags” English teacher Ms. Berger said. “It’s also to help prepare for the next class so you would just continue on with the course.”

Blizzard Days were recently called following the storm on Dec. 2-3, and The Pembroke School District “met the completion threshold,” headmaster Mr. Famulari said in an email.