I’m sure all of you by now know what a terrible winter we’ve had around here. In mid January we had no snow…then by the end of February it looked like this….
Here are the hills along my street. I was talking with my neighbor who has lived in town for a long time. She said that this is about the worsts she has ever seen since living in town.  
Because of all of the snow, school across the Midwest are trying to figure out what to do with the school calendar. Kids are required to go so many days or hours of school depending on your school. Well our school is now 11 days behind because of snow days. UGH.
So starting on the 12th of March the school has changed the school opening and closing times. Kids now start classes 15 minutes earlier and end school 15 minutes later. Most of you all are thinking no big deal. It really isn’t a big deal until I start thinking of each of my individual childcare families.
One little girl will now get on the bus at her home stop instead. Other families will all be here earlier in the day. That means my days start a little earlier as they all come with younger siblings.
The same happens at the end of the day. The bus is arriving later so I have sibling kids later in the day. It’s all okay but an adjustment.
The winter isn’t over yet so I’m curious what other changes might be made if we have more school days. Right now our kiddos are suppose to be done with school on May 30th. I’m really hoping we don’t end up with more school days and are having to attend school in June. Around here, June often heats up with humidity and it’s no fun to be at school under those conditions.
I will happily trade in all of the kiddos boots that line my wall and trade them in for some flip flops! I’m guessing we’ll still get another storm or two before the year is over. If that happens, we might end up with a couple days of school into June…but at least it won’t be very far into June.
I talked to Kayla. Her school is adding on only to the end of the school day. They are implementing a mandatory reading time for those minutes. Teachers are required to have a novel and read too. Now that sounds like BLISS!!
So people who have schools in similar situations please chime in and let us know what your school is doing to make up school days.
They’ve added three days to the end of the school year here so the kids go until mid-June but all of our schools are now air conditioned so the only problem is angry parents who scheduled their vacation to begin the day school ends. The other problem is there have been so many two-hour delays that high school students have missed their early classes so often that the schools have had to completely revamp their school day schedules to get in the necessary hours of instruction. It’s definitely a mess but at least it now appears the worst is over here.
My niece and nephew used to live in Montgomery County, Maryland, with one giant school system. The northern towns would have ice, so everyone got a snow day. It got so bad one year, the legislature had to exempt the district from the mandatory number of days that year.
I live outside Chicago and we have missed 5 days. They added them to the end of the school year and we now get out June 11th.
Our schools rarely ever close. We had a school closure day on Friday because of heavy snow fall and that is the first time since 1997. We do have days when buses don’t run but we still hold classes so it counts as a school day.
Here in Canada, there are quite a few snow,/storm days depending on which province you live in and how much snow and -30 temps you have. Our school year seems to be different than yours though….Our elementary schools and high schools usually start the school year after Labour day in September and the school year finished on June 30th . They have March break for a week in mid March…..and of course our statutory holidays…ie Thanksgiving,. Christmas, Easter etc…it’s interesting to see the differences
Hoping everything is going well with you this week and sending good thoughts to you all
We have a few built in days for snow make-up but then they start adding them to the end of the year. Our board has to vote on how we are addressing things because we are going until mid June. I’m anxious to hear the solution they settle on after all the rumors I’ve heard.
Our schools will add on days to the end of the school year. If we had 11 days we would have to do those 11 days after the date school was to be let out. It was always fun as a teacher, because I would always take summer school classes at the university and they only had a one-week break between the end of school for us and the start of summer sessions.
We’ve had missed days but not because of snow. Our were tornadoes and flooding so they were declared emergencies by the Governor so they don’t have to be made up . We’ve had several this year because of flooding but I don’t know exactly how many…maybe 5.
Interesting how different States do but then each State has different weather. We do have built in days in case we do get snowed in. If they are not used for snow they are teacher work days.
I, like Janet, live in Canada and the school calendar runs from September (after Labour Day) to June 30. When I see your snow banks, I think, “Wow, that’s all you have?” as that is just the beginning of winter for us. I can say that students have never had to make up days for lost snow days. It has never been done. It is difficult to add time on at the end or beginning of the day, when most of the children are on the bus for over an hour one way. I sometimes think that we forget to give the children credit for what they can accomplish. Kayla’s school has implemented a great strategy as one learns to read by reading. It certainly is interesting to read the comments, though.
Your snow looks just like Anchorage, Alaska where I grew up and don’t ever remember a “snow day”. Every day from October to March would have been possible for a ”snow day”. But after living in NC when they got almost 2 feet of snow and the schools were closed for 2 weeks, I understand the danger to those having to ride school buses.
We add snow days on to the end of the year. We used to get out the latter part of June but one year we had some many snow days that we cut it pretty close to June 30th, which is the latest school can remain in session due to state law. We lost our winter break and now are scheduled early June but with snow days we usually end between the 15-22nd.
Compared to our 8 feet, that doesn’t seem like much…..am surprised schools ever closed for you. We had our first closure ever after a weekend with a record 30″ of fresh snow. The snow along our driveway and roadside is well over 15 feet.
It’s awful when school schedules change and uproot every family and every business associated with a family. I’m sad for ALL of you :-(
The local school system here uses up to 10 NTI (non-traditional instruction) days when schools are closed due to weather. The students receive packets with assignments for each day and they are expected to complete the work and turn it in when they return to school. These days count as instruction days so the school calendar doesn’t change unless they use all 10 NTI days and have to use snow days too. The state (KY) has standards for NTI days and the school system’s plan must meet these standards to be approved to use NTI.
Our school district in the north metro (twin cities) starts after Labor Day and goes until June 6th. We have had 6 snow days- which is super unusual. We’ve already made up one day on Thursday last week by having a student contact day instead of a teachers only day at the end of the trimester. My girls didn’t go, as we had already planned to go to a quilting retreat Thursday morning- Monday. As it turned out, the boys hockey team ended up in tournaments, so the building was pretty empty anyway. Pep band and student fan busses filled up and left by 9:30 in the morning headed for the Excel Energy Center.
My sister works at their school in SW Minnesota… On March 4th, they began stretching the day by 20 minutes at the end of the day. My understanding is that each class will be a little longer. I think that starting earlier would be much harder than staying longer.
We have a couple of snow days built into the calendar. The schools in our county also have a longer day than required by law so that when we are out of snow days, we still have the number of hours of school required most of the time. Last resort is to take away holidays or add time to the end of the days. We are also not allowed to start school here before Labor Day.
For those of you in Canada and the northern states, I’d like to point out that those of us in many southern states do not have snow removal equipment. The states don’t invest in plows and residents do not own snowblowers so when we get an unusual winter with even small amounts of snow or ice, it causes lots of problems. And people who haven’t experienced snow don’t know how to drive in it either. It may sound silly to those of you who get lots of snow but it can be a major disaster when it occurs in the south.
From some of the comments, some may not realize that it is the wind that comes along with the snow that closes the schools in Iowa. When the rural roads are drifted shut with three to four foot drifts or more, there is no way the buses or anyone else can get through them. If we had the gentle falling snow with no wind, it would make a lot of difference. I don’t know where everyone is from that commented, but in Iowa we seem to always have very strong winds with our snow.
I live in Arkansas and as Bobi said our problem is not a whole lot of ice/snow removal equipment. Usually when we get something it is ice and it closes the schools. Last year there was so many days missed that the legislature had to vote to shorten the school year. After that they came up with an Alternative instruction like Myrna said they did in Kentucky. Now there are not any “snow days” because the students still have packets of work they have to complete.
When I was in school there was a week that was designated as snow days and if we didn’t use they we got off a week in the spring. Now it is called spring break and is built into the schedule for time off :)
We are a homeschool family, so no snow days, although the co-op we participate in had a couple and the Tech center my son attends had a lot. I think our county had enough that there is talk of forgiving some of them so that school can be out at a reasonable time. I’m ready for spring! And I’m ready for graduation. Last one!
In west central WI we have missed quite a few days also. I think it has been 8 or 9. The administration has done a little of everything to make up days including adding 5 minutes to the beginning of the day & 15 to the end, adding days at the end of the year, taking one day back over Easter break and turning one teacher inservice day the kids were supposed to have off this month into a regular school day. Today school was called off because of icy and flooding roads so I think that will put us at about June 6th for our last student day.