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Snow Days Mean Shorter Spring Break For Many Students

Tom Bullock/WFAE News

How quickly the joy of a snow day disappears when all those make-up days are just around the corner. Many districts across North Carolina including CMS plan to call students back to school during spring break. Families are grumbling.    

CMS students were supposed to have today and tomorrow off.  But it snowed a couple of weeks ago and school was canceled.  Then, it snowed a lot more last week and more days were canceled. Altogether, kids were out of school for five days. 

Many districts say they’ll have to make up some of those days during spring break.  In the case of CMS, it’s two days. 

“It was just like my heart sank because we look so forward to the very, limited time off,” says Tina Gonda who has a son at Ardrey Kell High School. 

She also has four plane tickets to Destin, Florida she purchased several months ago.

“At this point we saved to be able to go on our vacation and we would be penalized. Unfortunately, we’d have to make a decision that our children would be empty from the classroom that day,” says Gonda. 

Adding on days to the end of the year is out of the question, since state law won’t allow districts to end after June 10.  That’s the last day for CMS students. It also requires districts to have 185 days of school or 1,025 hours of instruction. 

CMS has used up all three of its remaining teacher workdays for make-up days.

Gaston County Schools plans to have students come in for three days during spring break. 

But Cabarrus County Schools handles make-up days differently. The superintendent there has chosen to use Saturdays as make-up days.  Saturday, February 22 will be one of them. 

Governor Pat McCrory says he’s meeting with education officials this week to see if there’s any way to give districts more flexibility for make-up days this year and still stay within the law. 

Lisa Worf traded the Midwest for Charlotte in 2006 to take a job at WFAE. She worked with public TV in Detroit and taught English in Austria before making her way to radio. Lisa graduated from University of Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in English.