As Spring Begins, a Look Back at Winter’s Most Amusing, Goofy, Ridiculous Snow Day Announcements

This article is one in a series at The 74 that profiles the heroes, victories, success stories, and random acts of kindness to be found at schools all across America. Read more of our recent inspiring profiles at The74million.org/series/inspiring.

There’s no business like snow business.

Schoolkids around the country have enjoyed an extra dose of levity this winter, right at the start of their unexpected days off — snow day alerts have gotten mighty entertaining.

Take Rhonda, by far the cheekiest, most sarcastic robocaller around. Rhonda is grudgingly tasked with phoning families in Newington, Connecticut, on snow day mornings to let them know school is canceled.

 

“Guess who. Yes, it’s Rhonda, and I am so sorry to call and wake you up,” she opens in her electronic monotone. “Who are we kidding. I am really not sorry at all. But I am programmed to be polite … blah blah blah.”

“So here’s the dealio. If you look outside, don’t do it now because I don’t have all day, but it may look like rain or light snow now, but around 11 o’clock, according to the news, the skies are supposed to open, and locusts will come down, and everyone will be crashing into one another.”

“I think that was hilarious,” Katherine Simone, a Martin Kellogg Middle School fifth-grader, said on Fox 61.

Rhonda has little patience for others, including Ralphie and Alexa, who sometimes join in on her calls.

Newington mom Marianne Simone told Fox she keep Rhonda’s amusing messages. “I let them go right to voicemail just so I can save them and listen to them later.”

But Rhonda isn’t the only one to make snow days extra fun. She has lots of human competition in turning mundane announcements into performance art.

 

They sing.

 

They rap.

 

They get arrested.

Florence, Kentucky, Principal Chad Caddell, who channeled Mariah Carey while crooning a school-closing message to students in January, told the Lexington Herald-Leader it’s all about creating “a contagious culture for our students, faculty, and parents. A surprise and delight kind of culture …”

All in all, educators have gotten rave reviews, or at the very least an A for effort, from students and other followers on social media.

Commenting on a hip-hop snow day announcement by Durham Academy administrators Michael Ulku-Steiner and Lee Hark, one YouTube fan wrote, “I love how they must have had to write and rehearse this while they were probably supposed to be doing paperwork or something.”

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