Many students enjoyed their time off due to weather and snow, but according to parents, this time off could be excessive or unnecessarily long. How do these snow days affect the end-of-school date and Lafayette students?
Lafayette and the rest of Fayette County have had four snow days and four NTI (non-traditional instruction) days this 2024-2025 school year. School was cancelled January 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th, and we had NTI days on the 13th, 14th, 15th, and the 22nd. Fayettte County Public Schools (FCPS) plans a few snow days in case of bad weather. Legally, we have to attend 170 days each year or 1,062 hours. FCPS has us scheduled for 174 days this year. The hours tell us why we don't do delays once we have hit our allotted snow days. However, this raises the question of whether the snow days were covered by that time or if students will be adding a day or two to the end of the year to make up for missing school.
FCPS plans four days for snow or bad weather to cover the time off if needed. An NTI day counts as a school day since students are assigned work to complete at home. Fayette County Public Schools states, “On an NTI weather day, school buildings are closed, but students participate in learning at home. As a result, it counts as a school day and does not need to be made up, and the school year does not need to be extended.” Students will not have to make up any school days. So why were parents upset?
The main reason parents were upset is that, for younger kids, parents would have to take off work to take care of their kids due to them being too young to stay home alone. However, most Lafayette students are old enough to take care of themselves while their parents are at work. Some of Lafayette's parents were still upset because, as a mom on Facebook commented, “…we were able to drive to work in the weather. Students should be able to get to school in this weather”.
However, different neighborhoods in different conditions had other opinions. When buses were sent off to check the roads, Southpoint was shown as dangerous, as was other neighborhoods.
An email sent on January 14th from Fayette County Public Schools says, “FCPS’s transportation team took buses out today to test the safety of our bus routes. Many of our drivers experienced slick road conditions…as many as 119 neighborhoods and streets were identified as inaccessible for buses, including Sandersville, Southpoint, Castlewood, Highland Park, and Carducci.” It simply wasn’t safe for the buses to drive on ice or for the kids standing outside waiting for buses.
One of the concerns for NTI days is access to the internet and/or devices that would allow students to complete their NTI work. Although Lafayette provides Chromebooks for students, FCPS still wanted to check in on families to see if they had the internet or technology needed to complete NTI. An FCPS email sent out on January 13 states, “A recent survey tells us that as many as 81% of our families have the technology at home needed to participate in an NTI day. This NTI will ensure a safe learning environment for our students.” The survey reassured Fayette County Public Schools officials of their decision to utilize NTI days the second week of wintry weather. Most students would be able to complete their work.
The other 19% of students, and everyone else, were given three extra days to complete our assignments past the NTI date when they returned to in-person learning. This way, any student who could not complete their work would have time to make it up. Along with this extension, staff delivered Chromebooks and hotspots to students who needed them..
Overall, Lafayette and Fayette County made decisions that didn’t affect the end-of-year date and made our students safe. The school calendar was adjusted to include a make-up day on March 14th. This gives FCPS another possible snow day to use for future weather events.
With more winter weather predicted next week, we will likely need to utilize more NTI or snow/weather days in the next few weeks.
