Seven snow days affect students and faculty in the district

The Board of Education recently decided how to make up lost time

By Molly Smith

USD 232 has had a total of seven snow days this school year. To ensure students will have all of their hours, Friday, Apr. 19 will now be a regular school day. Additionally, Thursday, May 16 will now be the last day for seniors and Friday, May 24th will be the last day for students K-11.

Grace McLeod, JAG editor-in-chief

On Nov. 26, hundreds of students woke up with a sigh of relief to a notification explaining school had been canceled due to inclement weather. Four months and seven snow days later, on Monday, March 4, the Board of Education voted to finalize the schedule changes. The last day of school for seniors has been moved to Thursday, May 16 and the last day for K-11 students will now be Friday, May 24. In addition, it was reiterated that Friday, April 19 is now a regular school day.

According to junior Joe Scheck, over time, the snow days became repetitive and a nuisance.

“I think one or two snow days are fine and can be fun, but anything over that it becomes annoying,” Scheck said. “Schoolwork starts getting crammed in short amounts of time and days off start getting taken away.”

On the other hand, sophomore Hannah Evans loved the time off of school.

“The best feeling when I was younger was waking up and finding out school was canceled,” Evans said. “Now, I get that every week and it’s still awesome every time.”

By Molly Smith
A City of Shawnee snow plow plows Noble Circle. According to Gary Lezak, Kansas City has received 28.6 inches of snow since October 2018.

Math teacher Brian Rodkey noted that the snow days led to struggles keeping blue and silver day classes on the same lesson.

“[The snow days] tend to mix up which [color] day is the leading day. Sometimes blue day is leading and then we will have a snow day then we will have a couple of silver days back to back and then silver day is leading,” Rodkey said. “Then we had three silver days and one blue day and that really got silver day ahead.”

Scheck believed that the amount of snow days became detrimental to his performance at school.

“[The snow days] give me a lot less time to study for my classes, especially if the class is covering a new topic, because if I have any questions about the subject, I can’t ask a teacher,” Scheck said. “It also tends to push tests a lot closer in time to each other, which leads to a lot of stress and worse grades that I would have otherwise not gotten.”

In contrast, Evans believed that the snow days gave her more time to focus on school.

“[During a snow day,] I’m usually bored so I do my homework,” Evans said. “It’s usually quality work because I have nothing else to do.”

Rodkey believes the district’s decisions to cancel school have been justified because it is better to be safe than sorry.

“I know that a lot of [factors] go into their decisions, like the buses and the kids that are walking and elementary school kids. [The district] does a good job of making sure that the students are safe,” Rodkey said. “It’s better to air on the side of caution and not having a chance of someone getting in a wreck or a student getting frostbite.”

(Visited 228 times, 1 visits today)