Schools Use Varied Tactics To Make Up Time Lost To Snow

BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. – A longer school day is one tactic used by two local public school systems to avoid the headache and hassle of recouping time lost to winter weather.

The Bristol, Va., and Bristol, Tenn., school systems schedule students for more class time each day than their respective states mandate. And the extra hours come in handy, administrators at both systems said, because they count against whatever time might be missed for snow days.

“We’re OK unless we have an especially bad winter,” said Ina Danko, superintendent of the Bristol Virginia Public Schools. “We would have to miss eight days before we’d have to make up any.”

Rescheduling days lost due to weather can be an extremely difficult task for administrators, because the changes often conflict with plans that staff, teachers, students and students’ families have made well in advance.

Jack Barnes, director of schools for the Sullivan County, Tenn., system, encountered that first-hand at a board of education meeting Tuesday. Barnes had canceled classes Nov. 21 after an inch of snow fell at Tri-Cities Regional Airport the night before. He decided to make up the lost time by moving the start of
winter break from Dec. 18 to Dec. 19.

Barnes said he checked with each board member before making the change and sent a letter Nov. 22 notifying students, parents and employees. But that wasn’t enough notice for families who had scheduled holiday travel under the assumption there would be no school Dec. 19.

“Adding this day before Christmas is not our only option,” Sullivan County Education Association President Teddi Adler said.

At the meeting, Adler questioned Barnes’ decision and said it greatly inconvenienced a number of people who booked hotels, flights and scheduled days off well before learning about the change.

She said a number of other people, mainly teachers, had scheduled doctor’s appointments for themselves or their loved ones Dec. 19 and it could be another six months before they’d have a chance to see these doctors again.

But board members – including Vice Chairwoman Betty Coombs, who due to the extra day had to re-work a cruise vacation she planned over break – were unmoved by Adler’s pleas and decided to leave things as they were.

“There really is no good day you can take,” Barnes said at the meeting. “Every time that we go an extra day at the end of school heightens the amount of conflicts we could have.”

Tennessee law requires that public schools schedule a minimum of 180 days that are 6.5 hours long, said Rachel Woods, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Education. Sullivan County follows the minimums with its schedule. But when it comes to weather-related cancellations, Woods said, the biggest requirement is ensuring that students get that minimum class time, which amounts to 1,170 hours, including recess and lunch.

“You can add more time to each school day to stockpile hours” to meet this requirement, Woods said. This practice, she said, is known as banking time.

Todd Bailey, spokesman for the Bristol Tennessee Public Schools, said his school system banks time. Because students spend seven hours a day at school, the system has banked almost 13 extra days into its schedule.

But so far, Bailey said, the school system hasn’t had to use that time.

“The city crews do a fantastic job of keeping our roads clear,” Bailey said.

Virginia has a similar set of requirements dictating the time its students spend in school, state Department of Education spokeswoman Julie Grimes said.

Virginia schools also bank days, including Bristol Virginia Public Schools, but the decision to use the practice is ultimately a local one, she said.

The Washington County Public Schools does not bank days, Superintendent Alan Lee said. “We make up any days that are missed,” he said.

Lee said the school system merely tacks one day to the end of the year for every day missed due to the weather. The school system cut two days so far this winter, he said, so will finish the year June 5 rather than June 3.

“We’ve been operating this way for as long as I’ve been here,” Lee said, adding that every student, parent and teacher knows that’s the way things are and they prepare for a longer year if winter turns bad.

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