After a total of seven snow days this winter, students are expecting to be in school much later than originally planned. Right now, school will be in session until Tuesday, June 27, 2017. Junior Megan Stevens says, ¨I don’t mind having a snow day once in awhile but the amount this year is a little much, and I’m not excited to be in school until the end of June.¨ Senior Alex Hussey says ¨the amount of snow days we’ve had this year is crazy.¨ The question is: How are we going to make up the snow days? Ideas are being explored for how to do this, and the decision will be announced on April 1st.

For seniors, the hours have to be made up differently than grades K-11. The legal requirement of school days for graduating seniors  is 170. They may be attending school on April 14th along with everyone else which would make 167 school days. Graduation would still be held on Sunday, June 11th. A school day is a minimum of 3 hours. Currently, 9 hours need to be made up.  The Maine Department of Education has proposed these ideas to make up the nine hours:

• Three late start Wednesdays (5/3, 5/10, 5/17) will be regular days. This would make up 4.5 of the 9 hours.
• Instead of presenting Senior Projects during the school days, they would be presented in the evening. This would make up the rest of the 4.5 hours.

On the other hand, grades K-11 legally needs a total of 175 school days. The RSU 21 calendar includes 178 school days to include any possible snow days that we may have. These are the proposed ideas to make up the rest of the days:

• Make April 14th a school day with early release
• Reduce RSU 21 school days to 177

This would make the last day of school Friday, June 23, making the number of student days for these grades 177 and the number of teacher days 182.