A snow day is one thing but a snow week can wreak havoc on a school district’s schedule.
Officials from the Kent School District had to cancel school on Monday due to a litany of weather-related issues from last week’s storms, but all schools had power and were open on Tuesday morning.
Power outages, downed tree limbs and disrupted supply deliveries forced the district to take another day to recover from the snow and ice storms which hit the week of Jan. 16.
On Monday, Kentwood High still didn’t have power, along with several elementary schools including Covington and Soos Creek. By late Monday Kentwood still did not have power.
“We also have power lines and downed trees limiting access at a number of schools,” said district spokesman Chris Loftis in an email. “Our own maintenance and operations teams are working with (Puget Sound Energy) to systematically correct each issue.”
By Monday afternoon, Loftis wrote, there were only three schools in the district — which is the fourth largest in the state and covers a significant geographic area — without power.
The decision was made to get kids back to school on Tuesday.
“Our objective through all of this has been to keep our students, staff, and facilities safe and to get back to regular classroom operations as soon as possible,” said a statement released by the district on behalf of the Kent School Board of Directors and Superintendent Edward Lee Vargas. “Our work is important, our students need us, and our community counts on us. The district is in the process of requesting a waiver of makeup days from OSPI. When we have a response to that request we will be able to finalize the revised calendar.”
Additionally, the board and superintendent signed off on moving a previously scheduled optional day at the end of the first semester from Monday, Jan. 30, to Monday, Feb. 6, making next Monday a regular school day for students and staff. The first semester will instead end on Friday, Feb. 3.
But, it wasn’t just five missed days of school due to inclement weather for Kent students.
The district’s Technology Expo scheduled for Jan. 18 at ShoWare Center in Kent had to be postponed as were several College Goal Sunday events scheduled for last week. The College Goal events were planned to help high school seniors work on federal financial aid application forms for college.
On Monday, Tahoma School District officials were on a two-hour delay schedule due to icy roads in the early morning hours.
The weather impacted the end of course assessment schedule for algebra and geometry students at Tahoma High and Tahoma Junior High, requiring those tests to be rescheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.
According to Tahoma district spokesman Kevin Patterson, the first snow day will be made up Friday, “which would otherwise be a non-student day for a semester break.”
“Other snow days would be made up in June,” Patterson wrote in an email. “We won’t make a final decision on other options, such as moving one of the waiver days to June and using it as a makeup day, until we see how many cancellation days we have. We probably won’t know for certain (on makeup days) until February, except for the Jan. 27 date.”
