wThis past December, Winston-Salem saw unprecedented amounts of snow. The winter storm on Dec. 9 brought up to 14 inches of snow in some areas of the Piedmont Triad. This caused school to be cancelled for the week of Dec. 10 through Dec 14.

The scheduled make-up days for WSFCS schools are now June 7 for Dec. 10, June 10 for Dec.11, June 11 for Dec. 12 and March 29 for Dec.13. There is currently no make-up day scheduled for Dec.14.

This has been an unusual school year for weather. WSFCS has already had to cancel for two days in Sept. (13 and 14) and one day in Oct. (12). This was due to Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael.

The school board voted to forgive the days missed in Sept. and make-up the day missed in Oct. on Jan. 22.

All six scheduled school makeup days, with the exception of Nov. 21, have been already added back to the calendar. This means that if WSFCS must cancel due to weather in the upcoming months, they will have to resort to different options to make up the days missed.  There is the potential that 30 minutes will be added on to the 45 school days in fourth quarter.

WSFCS has also made the decision to move the first semester high school exams back a week. It was originally scheduled for the week of Jan. 14 but is now set to begin Jan. 22 after the holiday for Martin Luther King Day.  

Moving the first semester exam week back has allowed teachers to get students caught up from the missed days in December.  This has prevented both students and teachers from feeling rushed to cram material in before midterm/final exams.

“Having second quarter pushed back has given me the opportunity to catch on some work we had missed over our snow days,” senior Gabby Gingras said. “It has given me the chance not to cram for my exams, as well as tests that would have been given the week before exams.”

Third quarter has been pushed back a week to begin Jan. 28 instead of Jan. 22. There are currently no breaks scheduled for the duration of third quarter. The next official break scheduled on the calendar is during fourth quarter for spring break.

It will be interesting to see what the end result is if there is anymore inclement weather in the upcoming months.