A canceled school day means an extra day of sleeping in and relaxing, but the long-term consequences may not be as appealing.
Recently, on Jan. 6 and 7, dangerous temperatures reached -17 degrees, causing school officials to cancel school. Severe weather often causes a disruption to students and teachers not only on the days off, but also for the rest of the school year.
In response to the canceled school days, district officials have extended the last day of school from May 30 to June 3. Because of the emergency days built into the schedule at the end of the school year, Superintendent Dan Bridges says that “there are still the same number of instructional days.”
However, some classes do not have this benefit. The senior graduation date does not change on May 27, so senior classes have a limited number of instruction days.
The canceled school days have also pressured certain teachers to change their plans in order to fit in the curriculum for Advanced Placement (AP) classes. With fewer days to prepare for the College Board AP Tests taken in May, the teachers must find ways to compensate for the days off school.
AP Biology teacher Dr. Kathy Hurd initially notified students before winter break that there would be a unit test on Wednesday Jan. 8. Hurd kept the date set even after school was canceled, informing students through email. Though this meant students would be taking a test on the first day of second semester, Hurd knew there was no time to push exams back.
“The AP [Biology] test date does not change just because we lose a few days of school,” Hurd said. “We could have reviewed on Monday. But since this is a college course, students had winter break to study for [the test].”
Although students had the two weeks over break to study, many expected the test to be pushed back due to no school. Students, such as junior Matthew Cheung, were caught off guard and felt pressured to cram.
“I assumed that [the teachers] would push everything and the test back,” Cheung said. “So on Monday and Tuesday, I did nothing until I found out we had a test. My first thought was I got to start reading!”
Not only are AP classes affected, but classes such as Biotechnology must also be flexible with changing theirschedule. The class performs multiple experiments that are performed over consecutive days, so Biotechnology teacher Rebecca Swiontek has to make sure there is enough time to fit inall the labs into the limited number of five-day weeks.
”You can’t just shift [every lab] in your calendar down two days and have [the timing] work out okay because it throws off the necessary timing,” Swiontek said.
Sophomore Lucy Wang, who is taking AP Chemistry, hopes her classes won’t be as affected.
Wang said, “Even though I knew there would be less time to prepare for the AP tests, it’s early on enough in the semester, that we have enough time to catch up, so I’m not too worried.
Since school is always a possibility for teachers and students, they must “learn to be flexible with changing [their schedule].” With the extremities of Chicago-area weather, teachers like Swiontek know how to deal with canceled school days.
“[I] reminded myself that I’ve always figured it out in the past and that I would figure out [the schedule] again this year,” Swiontek said.
