Kate Hawkesby: If this weather is the new normal, we must find better solutions to dealing with it

So the rain is hitting Auckland city now, but yesterday between 8.30 and 3pm when there was hardly any rain or wind and I wondered why kids in all the unaffected areas couldn’t have been at school. Yesterday turned out to be an average rainy day. Yes I get it, precautions. It’s better to be safe than sorry, but seriously, if this is a pattern of weather we’re going to get more of, then we need to adjust our attitudes to it.  We need to dig deep on how we teach resilience and self-responsibility, over and above constantly looking to authorities to make the rules for us and dictate how we should live in a carte blanche fashion.  The coolest thing the Auckland Grammar principal did was do his own research on the weather, see that no heavy rain was starting before at least 3pm, and make up his own mind - and he was proven right to keep his school open. People who have lived in countries with monsoons, those who have lived in the States or the UK, anyone whose had to shovel snow from the driveway or the car before getting kids to school -  they know that just shutting everything up on a 'maybe', is not sustainable.  Visitors currently here from those countries think we’re soft. The level of fear and anxiety leading up to this cyclone was akin to that which was stoked up in this country during Covid. But where does it leave us? Kids at home, the school year interrupted again, people worried sick and productivity ground to a halt while everything gets shut up.  This cyclone, much like the last bad weather event we had, has been isolated to certain places. There was no reason for the whole of Auckland to be shut yesterday, particularly the schools. The irony of Chris Hipkins yesterday on Mike’s show saying there will be an announcement on truancy this week because they’ve ‘just got to get kids back to school’ was not lost on any of us. He talked about how too many students are not turning up and how backwards we’re going on that front, and how they really need kids to engage and yet, he said all that on the very day schools are shut. And not just for one day - but two full days.  If the message that comes from top down is that school is just something to be turned on and off like a tap, then what do they expect? What kids need is routine and structure. To get them to attend, you actually need the schools to be open. And reassure them they’re always open. How else do you impart the importance of school? Are schools going to shut on days that are too hot? On more rainy days?  Someone said to me that shutting schools because there may be a cyclone arriving, is like teaching kids that they can take a day off school if they think they may have a stomach ache coming on.  I understand that these weather patterns are relatively new to us so we're not entirely used to them yet, but if this sort of weather is the new normal for us, then we have to find better solutions than just closing everything up, and then wondering why kids don’t take school seriously.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.