Snow extends year, shortens break

As a result of recent snow days, MCPS has extended the school year and shortened spring break. The county Board of Education will request a two-day extension of the shortened spring break in a proposal that also asks for the use of holidays for class time, as well as a possible extension of the school day for part or the remainder of the school year in order to make up the snow days.

The proposal currently awaits approval from State Superintendent Nancy Grasmick. According to MCPS spokeswoman Kate Harrison, Grasmick expressed her intention to grant the two-day waiver to any school that requests it. "In all likelihood, we'll have those two days," said Harrison.

State school systems are required to have a 180-day school year. MCPS planned 184 days, with four extra days to account for weather emergencies. So far, ten school closings have resulted from large amounts of snow in the Washington, D.C., area, where some places were buried underneath as much as two feet of snow.

The current MCPS weather contingency plan calls for the extension of the school year by two days, from June 18 to June 20, and the shortening of spring break by four days.

According to Harrison, MCPS will not necessarily follow the contingency plan but instead look for alternate means of making up lost school days, including opening Professional Day on Mar 19 for school or extending the regular school day.

According to Guidance Resource Counselor Karen Hunt, if snow days continue to build up and schools cannot open for 180 days in the required ten-month period, schools will decide after the winter season how many hours need to be made up and add those hours to the end of the school day. But according to Harrison, MCPS will first seek other means of making up snow days before it decides to extend the school day.

The recent school closings have sharply decreased the amount of time teachers have to prepare students for standardized tests such as AP exams held in May. "It's hard on the teachers. They can't get any consistency built up," said Hunt.

David Swaney, who teaches the one-semester course AP Comparative Government, said he will be "flying through the material" in order to catch up his classes, which already had shortened time because AP exams are administered before the semester's end. "I will have to cut out a lot of fun things in class, like videos and guest speakers," Swaney said.

Others such as AP Calculus teacher Milton Roth, will offer AP Calculus practice meetings during lunch and encourage his students to attend review sessions after school in order to prepare his students.

School closings, especially the recent week of snow days, have also affected the class registration process for guidance counselors, who now have two weeks to enter students' data into the computer system, whereas they had a month before.