Vermont

Move Over Bieber: Meet the Vt. Principal Who Sang a Snow Day Announcement

To inform his students of Monday's school closure, David Cohn of Union Street Elementary in Springfield created a song set to a Justin Bieber hit

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An educator in Vermont is getting top marks from families in his district for the fun way he announced a snow day in this week’s storm.

David Cohn is the assistant superintendent of the Springfield School District and is currently the acting principal at Union Street Elementary School.

“It’s been really fun,” Cohn told necn and NBC 10 Boston, describing the social media stardom that came his way this week after he sang a snow day announcement set to the tune of Justin Bieber’s familiar song “Love Yourself.”

“I am a Bieber fan, I admit,” Cohn chuckled.

The acting principal did some performing in college, he said, so he already had the pipes. Cohn said he then wrote new lyrics for the Bieber hit to let his students know they’d have a snow day Monday.

A formal announcement also went out to parents, of course, but the kid-focused one took off like wildfire on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

“My mom showed me when I got up,” fifth-grader Bella Guglielmo said. “I thought it was good. It was pretty funny!”

“It’s actually really cool,” added Gavin Heath, another Springfield fifth grader. “He has a talent.”

“I was very impressed,” said Robert Zimmerman, Union Street Elementary’s music teacher.

“He could do a dance,” suggested Chloe Thompson, after necn and NBC 10 Boston asked how she thought Mr. Cohn could top his Bieber-inspired song for the district’s next snow day.

There will be no dancing, Cohn insists, but he is already getting requests for future snow day re-mixes. Those suggestions have included everything from rap songs to Disney tunes, Cohn said.

“I was worried last night that we might have a delay [at some point this winter], and I don’t have a delay version of that song—I just have the closing version,” Cohn noted, hinting it would take work if he were to pull off a similar act again.

And with winters in Vermont notoriously long, the pitch-perfect-principal may well want to start building a song library…

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