Fairfax County Student Protests Lack of Snow Day

On January 23, it came to light that a Fairfax County, Virginia, student called the administrator responsible for determining whether or not Lake Braddock Secondary School should be closed due to the inclement weather affecting the area in recent days. The student, Dave Kori, made the phone call to the administrator's cell phone. He was upset at the idea of not getting time off due to the snow.

Kori was met with a very angry response from the administrator's wife, Candy Tistadt. It would be an understatement to say that she did not like the idea of her husband being called at home; she considered it an invasion of privacy, and she seemed to resent the very idea of the phone call in the first place. I doubt she would have liked the idea of her husband being called at work, receiving the same complaints on a different phone line.

The debate is over who was out of line, and whether or not Mrs. Tistadt's complaint of invasion of privacy is warranted. I feel that there is enough blame to go around to last an eternity.

Having grown up in the greater Chicago area - Romeoville is not really that far from Chicago - I can understand this young man's desire to have the administrator declare a snow day. My wife, after reading the story, remembers times in grade school when her fellow pupils, exhibiting the same eagerness, used to count the number of students, knowing that the principal had to declare a snow day if more than 50% of the students were unable to get to school due to the weather. (They were always disappointed when they found out that 50% of the entire school had to be absent; these eager beavers wanted the principal to call off classes if 50% of the people in their particular room were absent.)

However, as someone who wanted to enter the field of education, I do not like the fact that this young man was able to call the administrator on his cell phone. He should have called the school's main number to lodge his protest. He also had the option of lodging his complaint in person, in the administrator's office. In other words, there is an invasion of privacy in the sense that the administrator was called on his cell phone, instead of at work.