Tag Archives: snow days

Features

Snow days call for schedule changes

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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.

Claire DeFrancisci, Features

Abnormal weather may prevent snow days before winter break

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By Claire DeFrancisci
Additional reporting by Rebekah Landers

This is the weather forecast this week for the Floyds Knobs area.

This week there has been a noticeable amount of warm weather in the Southern Indiana region. Instead of a foot of snow Southern Indiana has had several inches of rain. The lack of accumulating snow will damper the chances of snow days before Winter Break.

“I want it to snow really bad, it’s not normal for it to be this warm in December,” said sophomore Deja Jones.

The abnormally warm weather is most likely not here to stay. According to  Astronomy and Meteorology teacher CJ Jackson, the temperature will drop to a high of 34 degrees within the next  five days.

“Right now [the weather] is above average because we’ve had so many high temperatures. That’s because last year we had such cool temperatures over the European landmass. We had big blocking dome of pressure, and it wasn’t allowing the weather to move like it normally does. This year it’s moving like it normally does, so we’re getting unusually warm but kind of normal. That’s going to change in the next five days,” said Jackson

The next question that comes up is whether or not the school corporation will have snow days before the end of the semester. This year if FC has snow days before Winter Break, then the school will use the snow make-up days on Dec. 21 and 22. Many students and teachers have different opinions on this new system.

“I think that it’s a bad thing because families plan to travel and they expect to have the entire Christmas Break to do that,” said sophomore Tiffany Bowen.

For this reason it is strongly encouraged for families to not plan vacations around finals week, in case any sudden changes in the schedule occur. Although most students are reluctant to give away time from the much anticipated Winter Break, Jackson has a different view on the subject.

“[The snow make-up days] are pretty good because it helps decompress the prom and graduation issue when you have as many inclimate days as we have had over the past two or three years then that gets us to the point where we have to ask if we have to back commencement up so it kind of relieves that pressure. It’s awkward in that we have not done it before, but based on our last three years it will be a good way to relieve some of the pressure,” said Jackson.

To check up on the weather watch your local news or type in your zip code to the Weather.com  site.