| qoprowler.com |
The Prowler |
| Too
much snow, too little time By Erin Ruberry, News Editor On Sunday, February 16, MCPS students awoke to see over a foot of snow on the ground and more falling rapidly. There was one thought on each student's mind: "No school." School was already canceled Monday, February 17 because of President's Day, so students had to wait until the following day to see if they would have yet another snow day. And, as most people now know, classes ended up being canceled for the remainder of the week. A total of four days were missed that week, bringing the grand total of snow days this year to nine. MCPS is now faced with the problem of deciding how students can make up the missed time. After the fourth and fifth snow days, two days were added on to the end of the year. Deciding that there were too many snow days to make up, MCPS officials asked for a waiver from the state of Maryland for the snow days from the week of February 16. MCPS received this waiver and only had to change March 19 from a teachers' professional day to a full day of school for students. The snow day on February 28 raised questions about whether or not days should be taken off spring break or added to the end of school year, which is supposed to contain 180 days, with four built-in snow days. Last year, Montgomery County used none of its built-in snow days. One possible way to make up snow days would be to add thirty minutes on to the end of the school day, totaling less than five extra minutes per class. "I don't think that adding time onto the end of the day will
really make a difference in how much you learn or how well teachers
can prepare you for exams," junior Megan Lake says. "Especially
in AP classes, a few extra minutes won't give teachers time to teach
anything more than they usually could have." Advanced Placement classes will suffer the most losses from the snow days, as all AP exams are given on the same day all over the United States, giving students who have not had snow days an advantage over MCPS students. Montgomery County has not yet decided what it will do if there are more snows days. Until then, MCPS students will have to spend a few more days in classes until June 18, the new last day of school. |