By Rachel Lamb and Megan Johnson
Snow and ice have been cascading upon the ground in drastic amounts, especially over areas in Southern Indiana. Due to these wintery conditions, New Albany-Floyd County schools have lost several instructional school days.
“I have heard of two different ways to make them up. One is they take away from our second week of spring break and add on to the end of the year. Second is extra days are to be added to the end of next year,” said sophomore Logan Smith.
Options such as staying an extra hour after school and going to school on Saturdays have also been mentioned for other schools in Indiana.
“Fort Wayne Consolidated Schools have to stay after school one hour for 24 days straight, in order to make up snow days,” said principal Janie Whaley.
Senior Shaw Ray shared his opinion on the two ideas.
“I think the options are both bad, considering some people have jobs and play sports.”
Students that are seniors such as Ray, just want to make up the days needed and get out of high school.
“Honestly, I really do not care how the snow days are made up, as long as I graduate on time,” he said.
Whaley added that the graduation date, which is currently set for June 8, will not be moved unless five more snow days occur.
Certain days that students have missed are waived due to not necessarily the snow, but the temperature outside. Sometimes, the days missed contribute to a mixture of the two.
“I feel as though we should not have to make all of the days up, considering that we were in a state of emergency for a couple of them,” said freshman Kayla Brown.
Making up hours for two-hour delay days has even been in consideration by the Indiana legislature, but Whaley said that is not the plan for the immediate future.
Sophomore Heather Bouch shared why she thinks we should not have to make the hours up.
“We still went to school that day, just not for the full time.”
Bouch is not the only student that feels this way about the shortened days.
“I don’t think that we should have to make up the shortened days because we still attend those days and learn the material we need, even though the days were slightly shorter,” said Brown.
However, the administration has made an official decision on the matter. On Feb. 6, the dates on which snow days are to be made up were released on the New Albany-Floyd County School website. Students will have only one week of spring break and then will return to school on March 31 through April 4. There will also be an additional day added to the end of the year, June 2.
Any further missed days will be added on after June 2.