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Mamdani called NYC 8th grader to announce snow day. She says he should announce another.
By
Catalina Gonella
Published Feb 23, 2026
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New York City Mayor's Office Instagram
By
Catalina Gonella
Published Feb 23, 2026
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Eighth grader Victoria Mompoint got the scoop on New York City schools closing Monday before any other New York City student, from none other than the mayor himself, who videocalled her on Sunday and posted a recording of the call to make the public announcement.
“ At first, I thought it was going to be like a big Zoom meeting with multiple people. I wasn't expecting the mayor to call me by himself,” she said. “I was actually very shocked when I seen his face, I was like, 'Oh my God!’”
But if she could speak to him again, Mompoint says she would have one message: Don’t reopen schools for in-person learning on Tuesday. Mamdani announced at a press conference on Tuesday that it was his plan, telling students, “You can still pelt me with snowballs when you see me.”
“A lot of people are telling me, texting me on Instagram, ‘like, can you call the mayor back?” Mompoint said. ”The conditions are unsafe. It's not even like kids don't want to go to school — kids don't want to wait for a bus that’s going to take probably 30 minutes plus and climb over mountains of snow, and it's probably not possible that all the snow is going to be cleaned off by the time that kids have to go to school tomorrow morning.”
Mompoint said she believes many kids won’t be able to make it to school on Tuesday. And she said not all kids have the appropriate gear to get through the snow.
“ I personally, I don't have snow shoes. I have a lot of Jordans, but I don't wanna mess with my Jordans,” she said.
Mompoint, 14, is a local leader in her own right. She attends Meyer Levin School for the Performing Arts, where she serves as mayor for the Meyer Levin Student Government Association, which is modeled after the city government. Her position was partly why she was chosen for the mayoral phone call.
“ Right now we're working on bills, things that we want to be changed in our school,” she said.
But she has no power when it comes to calling school off due to the weather.
Mompoint said she spent the snow day, the first time schools have been closed since March 2019, playing with a friend in her East Flatbush backyard — first having a snowball fight and then jumping into piles of snow.
Tagged
February 2026 Blizzard
new york city
Catalina Gonella
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