John Matthews
WMAL.com
ROCKVILLE — (WMAL) History tells us that snowfall in the D.C. area comes in equal measure in January and February, with 5.6 inches in January on average, and 5.7 inches in February. If history holds true to form in the winter of 2018, Maryland’s public schools are going to be scrambling to make up days lost to closings.
After Wednesday’s half-inch school-closing snow storm, some Maryland counties have already run out of built-in snow days on their school calendars.
Prince George’s County, which had two snow days to start, closed for the third time this season, which means the system is planning to open on February 9 – a day that had been set aside for a teacher profgessional development day. If any more snow days are needed, the county warns they could shorten spring break.
Montgomery County closed for its second snow day, and has now also run out for the year. Another closing would result in the school year being extended by a day, to June 13th. Any closings beyond that would be taken from the beginning of spring break, or possibly add more days to the end of the school year.
Anne Arundel County has one snow day left, after closing twice for bad weather this season, but if more are needed, the county has indicated it will ask for a state waiver to open on Easter Monday, April 2nd.
Calvert County is already scheduling makeup days after being closed for four days so far. It’s already added two makeup days on January 25th and 26th.
The snow day squeeze is a result of Governor Larry Hogan’s executive order issued last year that requires local school calendars to be contained between Labor Day and June 15th. School systems that typically built four or five snow days into their calendars have been forced to shed snow days in order to fit the state minimum 180 days of instruction into the school year.
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