How is your local school disrict making up its snow days?

Lexington schools and most school districts here in Mass. budget five extra days into the school calendar as snow days at the start. That is, school ends June X on the calendar, but it can go to June X plus 5 as a matter of course and it's marked on the calendar so families can plan. Think we've had three snow days and an early dismissal day (which doesn't count) so far. Only danger is that because school ends very late here, like at the end of the third week in June, more than five snow days, which could happen, bumps into start of summer camps, which are big business in New England.

 

Took away a teacher development day and two days away from Spring Break.

Parents are complaining about having vacation plans conflicting, which I think is incredibly stupid.

When my parents wanted to take us on vacation, they simply hauled us out of school. Our attendance took a hit, but last I checked, perfect attendance doesn't matter at all.

 

Perfect? No. But attendance matters. In our district, high school students with attendance over 95 percent (while meeting other benchmarks) don't have to take finals, and this state has a program where if you meet some pretty attainable marks, like 95 percent attendance, a GPA of 3.5 or higher, a set number of hours of volunteer/service work and no disciplinary black marks on your record, the state will pay your full tuition for 2 years at a community college. As a kid, I wouldn't have been impressed by that. But as a parent, if my kids can live at home and get their first 2 years of college paid for, I'm all on board.

I'm of the opinion that parents who schedule vacation time so close so snow days could make it conflict are making a gamble. And if they lose that gamble, tough shit. My wife and I tell our kids all the time that school is their "job", so we're not about to pull them out to go to Disney or wherever and go against that message.

 

Here in lovely NJ, our state aid is contingent upon attendance. If you drop below 96 percent as a district, your aid goes down significantly. So attendance matters, greatly.

Of course, it's also a state where most teachers' union contracts state they cannot start work before September 1st, so we end up going until at least mid-June every year, and usually later. This year, with six snow days so far, my district will graduate on June 26th. We've added five days to the end of the year, and taken one day off Spring Break. Next day would be another Spring Break day, and then two more at the end if needed. If it goes beyond that? Saturday School.