GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – With more snow coming and winter far from over area schools are weighing their options on how to recoup lost school hours.
There’s still no announcement locally on what the game plan will be and the situation becomes even murkier when considering the possibility of losing more days in the future.
A number of different options have been discussed throughout area school districts, including students coming in on President’s Day, adding full school days to the calendar, adding extra minutes to the end of remaining school days, and less traditional “school from home” ideas.
Rhonda Sitnikau, a school board member with Green Bay Area Public Schools, says there’s no home run answer.
For her, the most important thing is to make a decision and then stand by it.
“We have to make sure that they [families] can adjust and make changes accordingly,” she says.
A lot of families are waiting to see if some holidays, like President’s Day, or even the first few days of summer vacation, become days where students are now asked to attend a full day of school.
Sitnikau remains hesitant about the approach.
“Maybe President’s Day wouldn’t be a bad idea, but that’s just one day,” she explains. “We’re probably going to have other hours or other days to have to factor in.”
And a less traditional idea where students complete assignments from home, which was discussed last week in Neenah, also has flaws in her eyes.
“Maybe they [families in the district] don’t have Internet hooked up at home,” she says. “We have families where that’s the case, they don’t have the ability to do that.”
In her experience, adding minutes to the end of the school day to meet hourly requirements, instead of adding full-days to the calendar, is better received by families.
“They didn’t seem to think it made as big of a difference as having to come for an entire whole day,” explains Sitnikau.
She did note that it may require both adding minutes to the end time and a full day(s) to meet the hourly requirement, especially if more inclement weather days appear in the future.
So while schools wait out more winter weather before making decisions, families will also be waiting in order to move forward with plans.
“What I think we always have to remember is whatever we decide to do, families are going to plan for that,” she explains.
