Seniors were counting down the days to graduation, but now, they’re counting up the extra days they didn’t see coming. The snow days were enjoyable, but now seniors are learning the hard way that those snow days weren’t free.
“I was so surprised, I didn’t think that they were going to do us like that,” Sage Wingett (12) said.
“I was really irritated because that’s not our fault that it was snowing,” Makayla Watson (12) said.
” I think it’s dumb, but I get that there’s a certain amount of days that seniors have to go. It sucks but it’s there, nothing can do about it,” Jrdan Bass (12) said.
“Most students are required to complete 1116 hours, and seniors are required to complete 1086,” USD 259 Assistant Superintendent Dr. Loren Hatfield said. “And then we always build in additional hours because life happens and things like snow days, or cold days or any event that might cause us to miss some of those hours. We don’t want to just get the bare minimum; we want to build in some wiggle room for ourselves.”
Extra days is not something that happens every year-but it’s not all that uncommon.
“Three years ago, three or four years ago, we had some schools that had to have extra days off because that’s when we would shut down certain schools for the pandemic if they had too many staff members that were sick,” Hatfield said. “And so, we couldn’t operate the school. And so, we have actually had to move seniors last day for individual schools in the last four years.”
The district has options-like using built in snow days or adjusting staff workdays. but when winter weather leads to multiple closures, sometimes adding days to the calendar is the only choice left.
“We were exploring potentially converting an in-service day in April to a day of school for kids instead of an in-service day.…which would have kept all of the seniors other than East high as May 14th as their last day, but upon further review, anytime you make changes to the calendar, it’s difficult on students, families and staff and to seniors.” Hatfield said.
Most students still have one more day to spare before the calendar would have to change-but seniors aren’t so lucky since part of their schedule is set in stone.
“We can’t move graduation dates because we have contracts with Koch Arena and Century 2, and so we actually have to leave graduation dates the same and be a little creative on some of the schools that have graduation before the seniors,” Hatfield said.
While students aren’t thrilled about extra school, some teachers are using the time to catch up, review, and squeeze in a little more learning before summer hits.
“Actually, I’m looking forward to it,” English teacher Jeanette Blide said, “because this way, I can add in a few extra things that I haven’t been able to do in past years.”
