[Trending News] DMV school districts face potential extension as snow days impact academic calendar

ROCKVILLE, Md. (7News) — The vast majority of school districts in the DMV gave students yet another snow day yesterday —which now begs the question, which has not been asked in years in the D.C. area, how many more days can schools afford?

Multiple snowstorms this winter have affected school calendars, with some schools now facing a longer year. The dreaded words “makeup days” are now top of mind for many schools all over the region. This week’s storm comes a little more than a month after most schools were shut down for a week at the beginning of the year.

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If the schools face more days off, they will likely have to go into late June. The District of Columbia has already extended the year by at least 3 days.

Maryland’s largest school system, Montgomery County, already needs to use designated makeup days to meet the state’s required number of instructional days. The school system still needs to figure out when those days will be made up.

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Prince George’s County has used five makeup days so far. Schools will now be open this Friday, Feb. 14, and on March 17, both were originally scheduled days off. The year will be extended until at least June 18.

Frederick County only has a few snow days left. They will discuss and vote on at a school board meeting on Feb. 18.

Charles and Anne Arundel counties are also both out of snow days and neither have announced immediate plans yet.

In Virginia, school systems operate a bit differently and have several more makeup days built into the school year.

“We, in Prince William County, have a 180-day calendar school year. We have built into our system enough capacity to withstand numerous snow days,” said Babur Lateef, Chairman of the Prince William County School Board.

Fairfax County has not yet exceeded its allotted 10 snow days. In Loudoun County, the school day is already longer than what is required by the state’s education department, so no make-up days are needed.

Schools in Arlington and Prince William’s counties are still in good shape, but Plan B’s are already being formulated just in case.

“Code red is where we close schools, code orange is where we move to virtual and all of the students are on computers, and they are one-to-one with our school division. Just like we were virtual in the pandemic, we are ready to go virtual if we need to, if we see a long prolonged closure,” added Lateef.

Stafford County Public Schools have two snow days left and Alexandria city has used synchronous, or live, virtual learning more than most school districts in the region.