Last year, USD 497 called off four days of school due to inclement weather, and only one of those days had to be made up by adding two minutes on to every class. This year, however, there are no snow days built into the calendar due to the various construction projects being worked on throughout the district.

“We’re trying to give our construction people as many days over the summer as we can to get the work done, so I really don’t want to be extending days into the summer,” Superintendent Dr. Rick Doll said.

The school district will do their best to avoid cancelling a full day of school. A new two-hour delayed start policy has been implemented. When unsafe weather conditions occur, the district will delay school start time for two hours. Delayed start is meant to allow dangerous weather conditions to pass, sidewalks and roads to be cleared and cold temperatures to warm.

“There are certain days where a snowstorm comes in right at the time school’s happening and if we could just wait a little bit then we would be able to get kids to school safely,” Doll said. “Or it gives the city a little more time to get the streets clean.”

While the delayed start policy is another option for the school district, entire days may still be called off if the temperatures are not expected to warm up. We always try to make sure we can get kids to school safely and that’s our number one priority and this is just one more option to do it.

While any zero-hour classes, practices and before-school care will be cancelled, buses will continue to run their normal routes and pick students up two hours after their regularly scheduled times, breakfast would still be served before school and dismissal will be at the normal time.