Last day of school now May 30 — if there are no more snow days

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

The students in the Charles City school district will have to go to class two days beyond Memorial Day.

That’s assuming there are no more snow days this year.

Wednesday’s winter storm caused classes in the Charles City Community School District to be cancelled for the fifth time this school year. The final day of school for students will now be Wednesday, May 30. Teachers will still be working until June 5.

“We will look at some options for teachers, but as of now, that’s what the plan is,” said Dan Cox, Charles City superintendent of schools.

Cox said that although three days are built into the school calendar to allow snow days for students, the teacher’s contract requires them to work a certain number of days.

The five snow days for students were two more than the number built into the calendar. Initially, the last day of school was scheduled for Friday, May 25. Now the students will have to return on Tuesday, May 29, and Wednesday, May 30, after getting the Memorial Day holiday off on Monday.

Last year, the school district had to make up six days, but two of those were due to flooding and four due to snow days. The school district missed three days because of snow in 2015-16.

This year ls also unusual because all five snow days have come after the first of the year, and three of the five have come after the first day of spring.

“I recall one other year here when we had multiple days to make up, but this year has been totally not normal,” said Cox.

Friday this week is a teacher development day, and students have the day off. Cox has been asked by students and teachers why that day can’t be used as a make-up day for students.

“The school board didn’t approve that when they set the school calendar,” said Cox. “In order to do that, it would take board action, and it would also take approval from the teacher’s association.”

The decision whether to cancel classes because of weather is almost always questioned, and Cox said there are no set rules that he follows.

“I call it a subjective decision. There is no concrete procedure because the weather system is different each time,” he said.

Often times, Cox and Jerry Mitchell — the director of buildings, grounds and transportation in the Charles City school district —  will get in their cars and drive out into the country to take a look at how the roads are. Cox said he and Mitchell divide the district in half.

There was no need to hit the road for the latest cancellation, Cox said.

“In this case, we were in a winter storm warning,” Cox said. “I waited to see if the weather would shift and maybe it would get downgraded to just an advisory.”

Cox said when the winter storm didn’t shift, it became pretty obvious that it would be best to cancel school, rather than take the risk involved with bringing students in for half of a day and sending them home early.

“The weather forecasters are getting better all the time of knowing what the timing will be with a storm,” Cox said. “We knew that it was going to start pretty early on Wednesday with freezing rain, and the snow would come after that.”

Cox did drive out to check the roads early Thursday morning, just to make certain Wednesday’s snowfall had been safely cleared away. If not, he might have considered a two-hour delay on Thursday, he said.