Northwest Iowa — As we told you earlier, due to Mother Nature’s snowy disruption of classes earlier this winter, Sheldon Community School students will be in class a week longer than originally planned.
We were curious about how other school districts in the broadcast area were handling the missed school days caused by this winter’s weather, so we contacted a few area school administrators to ask, and here’s what we learned.
Administrator Dan Barkel at Western Christian in Hull tells us that he built plenty of extra hours into the school calendar before the 2015/16 school year began. In addition to the days missed due to weather, Western Christian has missed some school days when various athletic teams were making appearances in state tournament competition. Western has already made up two of the missed days, and will remain in class through June 3rd to complete their required 1080 hours of instructional time this school year.
Hartley-Melvin-Sanborn Superintendent Bill Thompson says that his district has been forced to add three days to the end of the current school year, moving the final day for classes from May 24th back to May 27th.
South O’Brien Community Schools administrators tell us that no decision has been made yet about make-up days. They say their situation is complicated by the fact that, as of Thursday morning, they don’t know how many school days will be missed due to the State Basketball Tournament. They say the days off for tournaments will have to be made up, as well.
At MOC-Floyd Valley, they’re making up all the full days that were missed due to the weather. The Dutch were originally scheduled to have their last day of classes for the year on May 25th, but that date has now been pushed back to June 2nd.
Wayne Dykstra at Unity Christian High School in Orange City says his students missed 5-1/2 to 6 days of school due to the weather, as well as three days to the Girls State Basketball Tournament last week. He says that, as a result, Unity is 8 to 9 days behind. Their original last day for classes of May 27th has been pushed back to June 2nd.
At Central Lyon, administrators tell us that they have had five snow days this school year, along with missing one day for the State Volleyball Tournament. As a result, the original last day of classes that was scheduled for May 25th will now be moved back to June 2nd.
All of the school administrators with whom we talked stressed that the dates they have listed for their last day of classes is subject to change, since Mother Nature has been known to give us snow and ice storms as late as April here in northwest Iowa.
