Ice Storm Extends School Year

Monday, February 5th 2007, 9:06 pm

By: News On 6

School boards across eastern Oklahoma met Monday night to decide how students will make up for Januaryâ€™s extra snow days. And just about every school district has a different strategy. News on 6 reporter Ashli Sims reports on the calendar confusion.

Green Country students better have enjoyed all of the sledding, snow angels and snow ball fights, because now it's time to make up for lost time. School boards across Northeastern Oklahoma are juggling holidays, in-service days and parent-teacher conference days to make sure students meet the state's requirement of 175 days.

For starters, you can scratch off President's day as a holiday. Just about every area district plans on holding classes, but the similarities tend to end there.

Sand Springs has to make up six days, so in addition to Presidentâ€™s day, they're considering holding classes on March 2nd, and moving the scheduled parent teacher conferences to Saturday. Sand Springs superintendent also wrote a letter to state education officials to see if the district could add 30 minutes to the school day from March 1st to April 6th to make up two more days.

Sand Springs isn't the only school district considering that option. But the state board of education isn't a fan of the idea, and they're not accepting applications to add time to meet the 175-day requirement. They don't think that's in the interest of the students, but there is one exception. Bartlesville Schools is making up a snow day by adding 30 minutes for 12 days just before state testing. They're allowed to do that because the Bruins calendar is six days longer than the state requires.

Jenks Public Schools also has a bit of a unique situation. President's day, a professional development day and possibly a day at the end of the year is all they need. But a flood kept Jenks middle school students out of class for two days, so they have two extra days to make up.

In Broken Arrow the school board has voted to move their last day to May 30th. That's about the norm, most schools are still going to be out by the end of May. Owasso could end up going into June, but that's not official yet.

All of the scheduling and rescheduling has many school districts hoping the snow days are finished for this year. You can check your school website, or call to keep up with all of the changes.