How local schools like Leetonia and Columbiana avoid using too many snow days

COLUMBIANA CO., Ohio (WKBN) – A snow day is one of the most exciting things for a student to hear. With the recent winter storms, schools have to have a backup plan if they use too many. They have to complete a certain amount of hours of teaching set forth by the state’s department of education.

We talked with two local superintendents about how they avoid having to extend the school year.

When schools plan out their school year, they have to plan for things such as snow days. The state requires that schools have to go a certain amount of hours.

To hit that benchmark, schools might plan for more days in case they have to close school.

“There are excess days because most districts are over in hours of the minimum required hours for the school year,” said Leetonia Superintendent Dennis Dunham.

This way, they can plan for snow days while not having to cut into spring or summer breaks.

But so far this winter, we’ve had two big snowstorms in less than a month.

Different districts make plans for the snow days and account for them. In Columbiana, after they’ve reached their five calamity days, they go to blizzard bag days for student lessons.

“Teachers can put in their web page, students can go to the web page, pull off the assignment and do the assignment,” said Columbiana Superintendent Donald Mook.

While 15 minutes away, Leetonia Schools have decided to use remote learning. Last Thursday and Friday, they decided to do that and not call off school because of all the previous number of days off.

“Martin Luther King weekend, again, snowstorm. So we had a significant number of days in a really compacted period of time,” Dunham said.

While both plans are different, this year’s snowstorms brought one good thing: time to prepare.

“I think the anticipation of the bad weather, some staff members were able to get those in the hands of students sooner rather than later,” Mook said.

“If we see weather coming and we say, there’s a chance we could be off, we could call that a remote learning day because everyone would take their devices home. Staff and students alike would be prepared to meet with one another,” Dunham said.

All backup plans must be agreed upon between the administration and the unions.