Snow Days Look a Little Different This School Year

“I think it would be cool to have a full spring break instead of snow days,” sophomore Casey Batz said.

Winter came this year and it came with a vengeance compared to last year. The groundhog even saw his shadow, so winter’s going to be extended.

Again.

This year, due to the hybrid schedule of only seeing a teacher in person once a week, the school has issued FIDs in place of snow days. FID stands for Flexible Instructional Day, which means that, instead of a snow day, students have a virtual day with a two-hour delay, so the first two classes are only half an hour while the other two are normal. This will allow for a longer spring break.

However, this also forces make-up days to be somewhat interesting to say the least. For this President’s day, the B group was in person with the A group virtual. This means that the A group was not in person at all for Day #5 of that week.

Sadly, the general consensus is that more snow will come, and students will most likely have even more snow days and FIDs. The school does have a plan of action for when to utilize the FIDs, but because administration is considering each weather event on a case-by-case basis, that schedule seems to be highly flexible.

“We were given a schedule in November by the administration, but at this point, I’m not even sure what the deciding factors are since that schedule has no longer been followed,” tehnology education teacher Mrs. Sara Sanocki said.

The two-hour delay schedules have also caused some strife. It is difficult to shorten classes when teachers only see students twice a week, with only one of those sessions in person. 

“While I understand that teachers need the time in the morning to get everything situated and ready to go, I don’t like losing all of that class time with my morning periods,” English teacher Mrs. Sarah Wilkinson said. “I believe that we could start at a regular time if we were prepared in advance.”

Unfortunately, it is difficult to be prepared for unpredictable weather, which creates many mixed feelings about FIDs.

“I like that we have the ability to teach and learn from home now so that the days don’t have to get added to the end of the year or affect our spring break as much,” Wilkinson continued. “I would prefer to have off when it’s nice out than when you can’t go outside and do anything.”