[”Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” [falling snow] Snow days is something magical, actually.

I wake up, have a quick breakfast, read a book or cuddle with a pet, build a blanket fort, shovel, make myself some hot cocoa, challenge my brother to a snowball fight.

When our parents get home, sometimes they take us out sledding.

We go to bed.

Usually, I, like, look out the window, and Im just like, “Gosh.” I love snow days.

District 20 has six built-in snow days, which, for some reason, four of them are eLearning.

We're asking to make all six of those traditional snow days.

The district, after COVID, converted the next four snow days into eLearning days.

So there's an expectation that students will log-on to their device, will attend school for the rest of the day, will watch classes, will do homework problems.

Its really hard for the teachers to communicate, because its easy to get distracted in your own home.

it's just really hard to take care of your younger siblings and to do schoolwork at the same time.

A lot of students don't have access to the online platform either.

A: theyve got to take care of younger siblings, or B: they just don't have the technology infrastructure at their home.

For teachers, its really hard for them to catch up on grading.

There was a lot of stress, especially on the front end, to like, plan what you're going to do with that day, to try to make it productive.

And the next day at school, you really had to have a plan for those students that couldnt access the online learning, what they were going to do to catch up.

Most of my friends are on board with me.

They've said stuff like, “Ok, so we'll help you write the speech for the school board meeting, and we'll help you next time you have an interview.” ...already on the agenda...

The next step is speaking in front of the school board.

...offer appreciation... She's wanting to meet with school administrators to talk about changing the policy.

She's already got her speech planned out.

Even highlighted, like, where she wants to be super serious and then has a different color highlighting for where she wants to be kind of funny in her speech.

...daydreaming of playing out in the snow.

I'll say something like, “Daydreaming of playing out in the snow.” With this face.

And then when it's serious, I'll probably just have a face like this.

I'm pretty comfortable speaking out publicly.

This petition asks that all districts have all the six built-in snow days in the calendar to be traditional snow days.

I'm happy to schedule any meetings with anyone in D20 leadership to talk about my petition.

Thank you.

In third grade, I did a protest against some boys that were being really aggressive during P.E.

Me and my friends made little signs out of cardboard, and some of the boys got annoyed, and they said they wouldn't be as aggressive during P.E.

if we promised that we would stop chanting.

And they were less aggressive, and after a while we stopped chanting.

[”Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” I think my next big protest is either going to be for teacher pay, or for our school to let us do a book project about “The Hunger Games” again.

Ben, come here.

I have to show you something.

Its this really cool thing called snow.

Oh, youre taking out mine!

It's worth it to do the protest because trying is better than just sitting back and doing nothing.

And if it works, then it makes you really happy that you know that you caused a change.

My name is Emily Beckman.

I'm 12 years old.

I go to DCC Middle School, and I want whenever the Air Force Academy closes down base, that the D20 does too, and that we get our six snow days back.

[”Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” [falling snow]