I often get asked about when students will have to make up the snow days that we often times get during the school year. Here recently due to the 8 straight days we missed I have gotten this question posed to me more than normal. So I thought I would take the time to try to explain how the calendar and snow days all work for Green Forest.
To understand snow days and make ups, you first must understand the requirements of the state for building the calendar. The minimum number of required hours in a school year is 1,044. Districts are required to make up every hour of the first 36 hours of school missed due to inclement weather. For this reason, most districts construct a calendar that includes at least 1,080 hours in which 36 hours are designated as weather make up days and the other 1,044 are the required hours that state statute requires a school be in session. If a district misses more than 36 hours of school due to inclement weather, the district must make up 1 hour for every 2 that is missed for the next 48 hours. This means that a district must make up 24 hours of inclement weather beyond the initial 36 hours that are required to be built into a calendar. In total, the maximum number of hours that a school district is required to make up is 60 hours. This translates for Green Forest into about 9 days of school.
What all this means is that if Green Forest initially builds a calendar with at least 1,104 hours (1,044 + 60), then our calendar is locked and the number of snow days we experience does not change anything. All breaks remain the same, the last day of school remains the same, and it may seem like we don't have to make up days missed for snow. While that may seem true, the reality is that the maximum amount of required make up days are just already built into the calendar. Our current calendar for this year was built with 1,143 hours total in it. We do this purposely to help families plan accordingly throughout the year for trips or appointments whatever it may be that may take your student out of classroom. We feel it is easier for families to plan knowing that those breaks and the end of school is set in stone regardless of whether we have 1 snow day or 50 snow days.
As always if you have any questions just reach out and we are more than happy to try to explain things further. Go Mustangs.