Colfax schools working on plan for making up snow days
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
By LeAnn R. Ralph
COLFAX — So far, students in the Colfax school district have had eight snow days off from school for winter storms and below-zero temperatures caused by a polar vortex.
At the time of the February 18 Colfax Board of Education meeting, there were seven snow days, but another winter storm on February 20 that dumped an additional eight inches of snow increased the total to eight days.
An early-release day on March 7 will be a make-up day with no early release, and Friday, March 8, which is during the girls’ basketball state tournament, could be a make-up day if the Colfax girls’ basketball team does not go to the state tournament, said William C. Yingst Jr., district administrator, at the Board of Education meeting.
March 15 is the Friday during the boys’ basketball state tournament, and if the boys do not go to state, that Friday could also be a make-up day, he said.
All together, the school district could make up four snow days with days on the calendar originally scheduled as no-school days but which could now become school days.
Current state law has minute requirements for school days, so there are ways to make up minutes in the school day between now and the end of May and not extend school attendance into June, Yingst said.
“We are not in a bad spot,” he said.
Trevor Hovde, Colfax Elementary principal, told the school board about a humorous incident with one little boy.
Apparently there has been speculation among students about how long they are going to have to go to school at the end of the year to make up for the snow days.
Hovde said he had told the boy with all of the days off school so far, administrators were going to try very hard to have the students out of school by the Fourth of July.
Hovde was teasing, of course.
The youngster took the conversation completely seriously, however, and was relieved to hear the students would be out of school by July 4 because, he said, he and his family “really like to spend the Fourth of July together as a family.”
With the addition of the eighth snow day, making up the time becomes more difficult.
The school district is in the process of reconfiguring the daily schedule to add approximately the same amount of minutes as those minutes lost to snow days, Yingst said in an e-mail message to the Colfax Messenger February 21.
“This is barring any additional inclement weather days, which is a pretty good likelihood if the last few weeks have been any indication,” he said.
“This is a guess as of today. Each cancellation or delay will cause us to completely recalculate our numbers,” Yingst said.
Although it seems hard to remember now only three weeks later, at the end of January, there was little to no snow on the ground.