Learning Shouldn’t Depend on the Forecast
When New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his Department of Education Chancellor Kamar Samuels announced that schools would shift to remote learning during this week’s storm, there were pockets of eye-rolling and claims to let kids be kids and enjoy a day off.
That reaction misunderstands the moment. Before you accuse me of channeling my inner Abe Simpson—shaking my fist and yelling at the clouds—hear me out.
This decision is not about relitigating COVID. It’s about using one of the few genuinely positive institutional lessons from that period—that learning does not have to stop just because a few snowflakes start falling.
In 2020, as Chair of the New York State Reimagine Education Advisory Council, we worked with educators, superintendents, and policymakers across the state to design New York’s response to COVID-19. We were responsible for reopening schools serving 2.7 million students while simultaneously building the technological and policy infrastructure to make remote and hybrid learning possible at scale.
Was remote learning perfect, especially during an unprecedented crisis? Of course not. In many cases, it was deeply imperfect. I experienced it first-hand as Chancellor of the State University of New York and is why we pushed to reopen SUNY campuses much sooner than other large systems.
As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention and COVID forced New York to build a system capable of sustaining learning through disruption. That infrastructure now exists. Not using it is a missed opportunity at a moment when New York City can least afford it.
There has been a modest uptick in grade 3–8 reading and math scores. Yet more than four in ten New York City students still do not meet basic standards. In many of the city’s highest-need schools, the reality is far worse, with as many as eight in ten students performing below grade level.
Instructional time is already insufficient, particularly for students who need the most support. We’re talking about meeting the state 180-day requirement, which is less than half the year. We need more learning, not less. In that context, treating storm days as automatic lost days is a luxury the system can no longer afford.
Remote learning during a weather emergency is not a grinch-like attempt to deprive kids of fun. It is a practical way to preserve instructional time while keeping students and staff safe. We cannot accept a system where disruptions automatically translate into lost learning, especially when we already have the tools in our educational toolbox to prevent it.
This is not about replacing in-person school. In-person learning remains essential for social development, engagement, and academic growth—particularly in pre-K through 12. But remote learning is a valuable supplement, especially when the real choice is not between in-person and remote, but between remote and nothing at all.
The real lesson of COVID was not a binary choice between remote and in-person learning. It was the importance of resilient systems. Education systems need the ability to adapt without defaulting to shutdowns that widen gaps and penalize the most vulnerable students.
Understandably, there are challenges, especially for parents juggling work while helping younger children log on or dealing with limited broadband access. But snow days create challenges for families regardless. Waiting for a perfect solution guarantees lost learning in the meantime.
There are distance and remote learning models that work extraordinarily well, particularly in postsecondary education—institutions like Penn Foster’s online high school for adults who never completed their diploma, Western Governors University, and my own institution, Empire State University. Technology has created unprecedented access to education. We should embrace that reality, even in systems where in-person instruction remains the norm, such as K–12.
In a city still struggling to recover from years of disrupted education, maximizing instructional time is exactly what leadership should look like.
Jim Malatras, Ph.D., is the Director of the Community Impact Policy Institute as well as the Chief Strategy Officer and Senior Vice President of Education at Fedcap, and faculty at Empire State University. Dr. Malatras previously served as the Chancellor of the State University of New York, Director of New York State Operations, President of Empire State College, and the Chairman of the New York State Reimagine Education Advisory Council.
