Every year, the school district designs schedules with four to five built-in snow days in order to meet state requirements for student attendance. This year, the number is four, and there have been four district-wide snow days issued. So, what does this mean?

Simply put, any more snow days issued will cause problems for the schedule, requiring it to be altered. Although the district has the option to simply add more days to the schedule, in previous instances of this situation there have been minutes added to each day in order to make up the time lost.

“The state requires that each student attend a minimum number of hours each year,” John Allison, district superintendent, said. “The amount of time required to be made up would determine how we would make up the time.”

In the event that there are any additional snow days, some seniors worry that graduation will be affected by the schedule changes. However, this is not the case.

“If the situation should arise, it should have no effect on graduation,” Clint Albers, principal, said.

When it comes to making the determination on when to call a snow day, the most common perception is that the decision is made based purely on the busses.

However, the district looks at many factors to decide upon cancellation. For instance, during the most recent three-day cancellation, road conditions were fine and all the busses were working. The decision was due to the iced-over public sidewalks and parking lots that posed too much of a danger to students, particularly at elementary and middle schools.