Enter the snow

It's snowing in DC. The forecast is for 3"-6", and though the first flakes fell around 0945, all the public schools in the area have been closed for the day. Last Thursday, the federal government closed early because it was snowing all day, though not a flake was sticking. DC tends to be semi-hysterical about snow, and I'd thought that I might riff on that, until I saw an editorial that (half-jokingly) called for salary penalties for school officials who cancelled school without sufficient cause (after the fact, of course). I realized that the issue is not necessarily one of judgement, but of transparency. The percieved problem with cancelling school, sending people home from work, etc, is not (or shouldn't be) that it sometimes snows more or less than expected. The issue is that the decision criteria used by officials are unknown. It seems to me that this ought to be a fairly simple decision tree: If there is X"of snowfall by 0600, or if Y" are predicted for the day, school is cancelled. Admittedly, it's probably a bit more complicated than that, but I can't see that it's so hard that it can't be put in a clear form that can be communicated to the public. If people wanted to criticize the decisions, at least it would be obvious what the decisions were. It would be possible to actually have data, versus anecdotes, to evaluate the decisions, and to consider the effects of other criteria. It would also highlight that it's not the school board's job to forecast the weather. They're relying on the NWS et al, just like the rest of us.

Of course, this tedious talk about transparency and public decision-making presumes that those complaining actually want to resolve the issue and move on to something more interesting, or that they would actually pay attention to publicized decision criteria (which, for all I know, are already out there). Probably very questionable assumptions.