The Mess of the School Calendar, Explained

​By Julie Amoss

Snow days are a nice break from the monotony of school. However, if too much snow falls from the heavens and cancels school for too many days, makeup days are often added onto the school calendar in June. ​

But now, thanks to Governor Hogan’s decree that schools may not continue past June 15th, how the schedule will change to accommodate the snow days is becoming a source of confusion for many.

On March 28, the Maryland State Legislature passed a bill allowing the school year to be extended past the June 15th limit, meaning Howard County was not allowed to waive their lost days. This upset many in the county, because the school system had already taken away three days of spring break to help make up for the lost days. “I can’t believe that they’re still making us make up days,” laments Ava Dutrow, a Sophomore at Glenelg High School. The sacrifice of spring break seemed pointless to many, given that we could have just made the days up at the end of the year anyway.

From there, however, with three remaining makeup days still needing to be accounted for, things became a little more vague. No one knew how the exam schedules would work, or if the three days could simply be waived away. Finally, after a few weeks of speculation, the county released a new schedule.

The school year has now been extended by three days, which sounds much worse than it is. Classes now do not officially end until June 19th. Fortunately, the three days that have been added on are half days where exams are not allowed to occur and work cannot be collected. Although schools cannot tell people explicitly to stay home, it’s relatively easy to read between the lines here. “I’m just going to put a movie on and redecorate my room,” explained one teacher when discussing her plans for the last three days. Since exams are finished by this point and there is no work to be done, it’s highly likely that attendance will be low for these last few days.

Exams are still on the same days they were before, except now those days are full ones. This can become an inconvenience to students, as they will have less time than normal to relax after a stressful exam day or study for their next tests. While it’s unlikely that teachers will continue to assign additional work during this week, anything could happen. The first exam will occur on June 11th, and there will be two exams a day for the following three days. After the exams, which will take up much of the morning, students will go to fourth period -and for the second two days an extended fifth- for lunch. Next, a shortened fifth and sixth period will close out the day.