Natasha Tynes is having pandemic flashbacks.

Her three children were still not back at school on Monday. Snow that turned into ice, then into “snowcrete,” led Montgomery County Public Schools to close its campuses yet again, keeping more than 156,000 kids home for the sixth day in a row.

“It’s been really hard,” said Tynes, who works from home as a ghostwriter.

In Maryland’s largest school district, officials said they didn’t reopen on Monday because, while plows had cleared school property, poor road conditions posed dangers for both bus riders and the roughly 20% of children who walk to campus.

“A street that is passable for a car is often still unsafe for a school bus, which requires more clearance to navigate turns and pass through narrow neighborhood roads,” district spokeswoman Liliana López said. “Post-plowing snow piles and ice-covered lanes restrict the visibility and space necessary for our drivers to operate without risk.”

Montgomery County’s winter storm response has been something of an outlier. School districts in Central Maryland welcomed children back on Monday. A couple of small districts reopened last week.

Frustrations over the extended closure are rumbling throughout the county, during hastily scheduled play dates, on social media and in calls to elected officials. County Council members, acknowledging many constituents’ frustrations, are holding public meetings on Monday and Tuesday on the snow response.

County Executive Marc Elrich said Monday that a mere snowstorm would not have kept schools closed this long.

“If it had just been snow, our response would be done. This is ice,” he said.

Montgomery County was not the only district in the state to shutter schools on Monday. Prince George’s County Public Schools also kept campuses closed after initially planning on a two-hour delay.

MCPS officials said they could not switch to virtual learning as the closures stretched on, unlike some districts in the Baltimore-area. López said the district doesn’t have a state-approved virtual learning plan and not every student owns a computer.

“In addition, this closure coincides with the start of a new semester, when many high school students are beginning new courses with new teachers, making a short-term transition to virtual learning impractical and disruptive,” she said.

To Tynes, that decision makes sense. She remembers her kids getting distracted by Roblox and other games around the house during those long months of virtual learning in 2020.

“It was a waste of time,” she said.

A hazardous trip to school

The district is responsible for clearing campus parking lots, bus loops and sidewalks on school property — a big task in a system of more than 200 schools. MCPS uses its own workers, plus contractors, “depending on the magnitude of the event,” López said.

By last Thursday, school officials reported that 30% of campus parking lots and bus loops were cleared. In an update sent Sunday afternoon, officials wrote that “all schools are ready.”

That wasn’t enough to bring kids back, they determined, because the county’s sprawling network of roads needed more work.

On Monday morning, Rockville High School’s parking lot was clear, and salt was sprinkled across the sidewalks bordering the campus. But that didn’t mean a clear walk to school.

While some sidewalks in the surrounding neighborhoods were shoveled, many others remained miniature ice rinks, marked by deep divots and reminders of Rockville’s pets.

Montgomery County paused enforcement of sidewalk clearing requirements, telling residents that they wouldn’t issue violation notices until Monday.

Near Meadow Hall Elementary, a bright yellow sign signaled to drivers that children would be using a crosswalk to get to school. The path to that crosswalk, however, remained buried under thick, slippery ice.

Emily DeTitta, spokeswoman for the county Department of Transportation, said the agency cleared roads surrounding county schools on Sunday night.

“We just received a request from MCPS for some additional areas late yesterday and are either assisting directly or asking the state when they are on state roads to address them,” she said.

Crews are also working to widen neighborhood roads and help clear sidewalks.

‘Your frustrations are valid’

Elrich said the county wasn’t equipped to respond to this unusual winter storm.

“This change in the weather screwed us up in a way we haven’t seen before,” he said.

Members of the council are more critical of the county’s response.

Council President Natali Fani-González scheduled a briefing with county government and MCPS officials for Tuesday’s council meeting, focusing on the status of ice and snow removal.

She noted in an email newsletter that the county’s online Winter Storm Information Portal did “not accurately reflect snowplowing on neighborhood streets” and encouraged community members to report unplowed streets online.

Council member Andrew Friedson, District 1, said the county let its students down.

“More than a week after a winter storm, students should be back in school and neighborhood streets should be safely passable,” he wrote in a post on X. “These are the core government services that matter most. Montgomery County must do better.”

At-large council member Will Jawando is hosting a virtual town hall at 7 p.m. Monday to give residents a chance to voice their concerns prior to the council’s briefing Tuesday.

“Your frustrations are valid, and it’s clear there are gaps in our storm response that need to be addressed,” Jawando wrote in a news release Sunday.

Ryan Holeywell, the father of an MCPS second-grader, said it’s frustrating that parents weren’t given a clear sense of what it would take to reopen the schools.

“The snow stopped falling more than a week ago, but even today, I don’t know what the next day is going to bring,” he said.

What‘s next?

Montgomery County school leaders said they hope to reopen campuses on Tuesday and need the community’s help.

They asked families to remove their cars from the streets, clear their sidewalks and report any roadways that require ice removal to 311.

The district’s calendar includes a handful of built-in emergency days, but officials have yet to announce a plan to make up those hours of learning, including whether the school year will be extended.

“We will evaluate our next steps once the weather incident is over. Our primary focus remains the safety of our students and staff,” López said.

As for Tynes, she’s relied on friends and neighbors to help her entertain her kids — in a system that reminds her of those pandemic pod days.

She took a break on Monday afternoon to go sledding with her 8-year-old son, Gabriel.

Does he want to go back to school?

“No.”

Jack Hogan contributed reporting to this story.