For Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools (CHCCS), snow days are typically "optional work days" for teachers in this district. This means that if teachers do not arrive at school, they must use a day of personal leave. In this district, teachers aren't allowed to work from home, they must clock in and out onsite. Teachers receive just 2 days of personal leave annually. This practice is outrageous and wrong for many reasons, most notably the following three:

1. Snow days result in a make-up day added to the school calendar, this means one snow day equals two days of work for teachers (the snow day that they are expected to work, or use a personal leave day + the make-up day added to the calendar). There is no additional compensation provided for the make-up day. This is not fair.
2. If conditions are not safe for our children to be transported, why are teachers expected to take the risk?
3. Many of our teachers are parents and forcing them to work on a snow day leaves these parents scrambling to find childcare. This means that in order for a teacher to avoid using a day of personal leave, they are forced to risk their own safety and ask a caregiver to do the same.

The irony is that teachers routinely work outside of school on a regular basis. They take papers home to grade and prepare lessons during the evenings and weekends. There is no compensation for this overtime, but that is less important to our teachers than doing all that they can to educate our children.

We can do better! We the undersigned respectfully request Superintendent Pam Baldwin and the CHCCS School Board change the snow day policy to allow teachers, at minimum, to work from home on snow days or be compensated for the make-up day added to the school calendar.