Now, do not wait for holiday announcements on TV and don't try calling your kid's teachers after 10 pm asking them if it is a holiday tomorrow. All you need to do is follow this twitter account that has been active since last November.
This Tamil Nadu government-run twitter handle @tnsdma expands out to Tamil Nadu State Disaster Management Agency. Started as an after effect of Cyclone Vardah, this twitter page has been giving timely updates on the weather forecast, holidays, Disaster management work in Tamil Nadu and so on. Though a lot of parents have been thankful for the update and have been spared from being glued to TV screens early in the morning or redialling the school landline non-stop for information.
After they tweeted in the wee hours that Children's Day was not to be a holiday on account of rain, quite a few parents raised their concerns about health condition of kids and about how this year's Children's Day wasn't happy for their kids as well as themselves because going to school on muddy roads was difficult.
Clearly, there's no question of universal popularity when it comes to Indian parents. Though they have been trying their best to be accurate and on point, it looks like a few parents are unhappy and requesting them to update them about whether the next day was going to be a holiday sooner and not at 5 am.
In response to some rather acidic twitter comments from parents asking them to declare holidays earlier, TN SDMA tweeted back that they are trying to "give timely information to the people, and it has to receive information from District collectors, Education department, Meteorology department and also traffic police feedback." The tweet had a bit of a jibe in there saying that though they considered children's safety as supreme, "it is necessary that schools should run."
