By Van Tieu
Families in Brownsville hit the park to sled and enjoy the snow day Wednesday after school was canceled in anticipation of the storm some are calling “snowmaggedon.”
For the Nesh family, figuring out which parent would stay home with the kids was easy. John Nesh works in construction so he had a snow day with his children, while his wife went to work.
In the lull of the storm, his sons, Noah, 5, and Nathan, 3, begged him to take them to Lincoln Terrace Park to play in the snow.
“It’s really not a problem,” Nesh said of the forced day off. “It is nice to spend time with my boys.”
At the park, the Nesh family made friends with the Lugo family, joining forces to build snowmen. Lemont Lugo enjoyed the snow day playing with his three daughters, twins Lauren and Jordan, 6, and Kristen, 3.
“The snow, it ain’t even that bad,” Lemont said when asked about the school cancellation. “It could even rain and take all this snow away. I’m a big kid at heart – I like to play.”
New York City rarely lets a snowstorm get in the way of the buzz of its daily routine. But anticipating the snow now blanketing the city, Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein canceled public and charter schools on Tuesday.
“It’s never something we do lightly or easily, but based on the information we now have, and the fact that we’re confident that we’re not going to get much new information between now and tomorrow morning, this was the sensible and prudent thing to do,” he said.
Five to 15 inches of snow were expected to blanket the New York City region Wednesday, with the strongest, blizzard-like snowfall between noon and 5 p.m. – when students would normally be traveling home from school.
The last time schools were canceled in anticipation of a snowstorm was in March 2009, said Margie Feinberg, spokesperson for the Department of Education.
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