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Parishville-Hopkinton Central makes some snow days remote learning days

Posted 1/16/23

PARISHVILLE — Parishville-Hopkinton Central has made changes to the way it handles snow days. School districts create calendars annually providing 180 days of instruction. The final school day in …

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Parishville-Hopkinton Central makes some snow days remote learning days

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PARISHVILLE — Parishville-Hopkinton Central has made changes to the way it handles snow days.

School districts create calendars annually providing 180 days of instruction. The final school day in June is pretty universal across the state as the end date is dictated by the conclusion of the secondary regent exams. The school’s start date, and the dates of instruction up until that last day, are locally determined.

Not all schools in NYS build in as many snow days as districts in the North Country.

“Districts in the southern part of the state don’t build in many, if any at all, snow days into their yearly calendar,’ a statement on the PHCS district website says. “They aren’t worried about inclement weather and, in some cases, they choose to use those days to observe different holidays than the ones we observe in the North Country. It’s common practice in the North Country to have as many snow days in the original calendar as possible to handle the winter storms and fluctuating weather.

Officials say it’s not uncommon to see a starting calendar that has 184-187 instructional days to ensure schools have met the mandated 180 days of instruction.

Snow days and emergency days are not treated the same way when counting towards the 180 day calendar.

Snow days are considered “extraordinary days”, just like water main breaks, heating issues, etc. School districts would have to use planned vacation days in lieu of snow days if we exhausted all of our snow days.

Emergency days are determined by local, county, and state governments by the declaration of a state of emergency. School districts would not have to exhaust scheduled vacation days if school was closed due to a state of emergency.

The Department of Education added some additional flexibility to districts in the form of a “snow day pilot” program. This excerpt is from a memo released from the Department of Education in September of this year:

“The Department previously authorized a “snow day pilot” program during the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years. This program allowed school districts to deliver instruction remotely on days in which they would otherwise have closed due to an emergency. In the 2020-2021 school year, 126 districts reported utilizing this program.”

This “snow day pilot” program was extended to the 2022-2023 school year. This gives districts the opportunity to save fewer snow days knowing they could shift to remote learning in the event of an extraordinary condition. When PHCS built our calendar for this year we planned on a 183 day calendar. The District chose to keep 3 snow days in the calendar knowing that we could also choose to shift to remote instruction depending on the circumstance.

“Our first snow day this year was considered a non-instructional “snow day”,” officials said. “We had the option to go remote then as well but that storm resulted in several power outages throughout our district so we chose to treat that day as a traditional snow day.”

The district's most recent remote learning day didn’t result in widespread power outages so school officials shifted to remote instruction.

“We currently have two snow days left to finish out the year,” officials said. “The circumstances of the weather event will dictate whether we shift to remote learning or use a snow day. We are fortunate now to have additional tools to help navigate these unpredictable events.”