The Prowler

Editorial: Return to past snow day policy

Friday, February 26, 2010 By The Prowler Staff

One of the changes in the new 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 teachers’ contract is that all snow days will have to be made up either during the school year or after the currently scheduled last day of school on June 4. The Wisconsin state law requires that a school year must consist of 180 days, and of the 180 days, 5 may be used for bad weather. This leads to the question why do we have to make up snow days if by law we are allowed 5 free snow days? Due to the snow day that we had on December 9, we already have school on April 5, which was 1 of 2 days we had for spring break. The snow day issue is a hot topic among the student body because everyone has an opinion on it, and few agree with the new policy. It’s not a good idea to be forced to make up every snow day because the decision to call a snow day should be based strictly on the weather and not clouded by the makeup snow day in June. On February 9 th several students had a hard time driving home through the bad weather when we stayed in school all day instead of having a half day. Many students and faculty members of Chilton High School don’t actually live in Chilton so many wouldn’t be comfortable driving twenty to even thirty minutes in a blizzard to get to school and back home. Plus, some students just got their licenses weeks ago and by no means have the proper experience to be driving in the bad weather. Other students may even stay home because they don’t feel safe going out with the bad weather. Hilbert has a similar policy since they have to have a makeup day on May 28 due to a snow day they had earlier this year. The difference, though, is that if they have any more snow days only the teachers will come in to make them up. New Holstein has a different policy though: the 1 st snow day is made up with students and staff, the 2 nd isn’t made up, the 3 rd is made up with just staff and no students, the 4 th isn’t made up either, and then the 5 th and on are made up with staff and students. Our suggestion is that the school snow day policy should be put back to the way it used to be. The old policy said that the 1 st , 2 nd and 5 th snow days didn’t have to be made up, but the 3 rd , 4 th and 6 th had to be made up.