I appreciate the opportunity to answer some new questions about Blizzard Bags and ‘snow days’ given our cancellation of school on January 18. As many know, the 18th was a half-day due to mid-year exams at the high school. With a half-day schedule, there is no way to have a two-our delay if the weather makes the roads difficult to traverse for our buses. As you’ll recall, despite the forecast being somewhat off, there was substantial icing and freezing of many roads throughout the district. If this had been a regular length school day, we would have had a two-hour delay but, given the half-day schedule, school was cancelled that day.
Also under normal circumstances, we would have called for this cancellation to be a Blizzard Bag Day, i.e., the students would have all been given appropriate work to make the cancelled day count as a day of school to meet our 180-day state requirement for school attendance days. Again, because of the high school exam schedule, and the fact that this was a break between the first and second semester classes for them, it was not feasible to have high school students do the appropriate work to have that day count. For this reason, it was determined that the cancelled day of school on January 18 would not be a Blizzard Bag Day, meaning that this day would have to be made up after the last scheduled day of school on June 9th.
From the questions and concerns I’ve seen regarding making up this day, I believe we were not as clear in our description on the website and district app as we might have been regarding making up this day. As noted on social media, the district does have five days built into the district calendar for snow days. What this means is that the first five days of school missed throughout the school year are made up during these ‘extra’ days for everyone except the seniors. Thus the last day of the school year for seniors is June 2nd and would have been June 9th for everyone else if we didn’t miss any school throughout the year. Under the district’s Blizzard Bag Day program, Blizzard Bags may be used to cover up to five snow days and therefore not have to be made up in June. As January 8th was not a Blizzard Bag Day for the reasons stated earlier, this day will need to be made up as one of the scheduled ‘snow days’, which now brings the end of the school year to Monday, June 12 (again for all students except seniors who graduate on June 2). So, although we have to ‘make up’ the day at the end of the year, it is not added on past the five snow days built into the calendar (June 12 to June 16).
As we proceed through the winter and early spring, any time school is cancelled we have to decide if this will be a Blizzard Bag Day or a day that has to be made up in June. With the exception of the half-days in January for mid-year exams, we expect that any other single day missed for weather or other reasons would be a Blizzard Bag Day and not have to be made up in June. If we have several cancelled days in a row, we will most likely only count the first day as a Blizzard Bag Day and the remaining days would have to be made up in June (i.e., if we have three days of school in a row cancelled due to weather, only one may be considered a Blizzard Bag Day). As indicated in earlier columns, the Blizzard Bag Day concept will be reviewed this spring to determine how well it worked and whether changes need to be made in order to continue this program next year.
