Pocatello school district talks about snow days affecting schedule and budget

Already this winter, schools have had to take multiple school days off due to weather. The Pocatello/Chubbuck school district was one that canceled three school days in a row.

So do snow days affect budgets for school districts at all?

Shelley Allen, community relations for school district 25 in Pocatello, said it does. She said even though kids are off, the district still has to pay the staff. It also has to pay to keep utilities running, like heat and water. It has to make sure those utilities are working when the kids are back.

Allen said the funding formula is based on average daily attendance. So no kids in school means no funding coming in for the district. So if the district is paying frequent costs for closures with no funding coming in, it could potentially add up a bit. But Allen said the district does allow for things like this in its yearly budget.

So snow days can affect budgets for the district. But how is their schedule looking with back-to-back snow days?

Allen said the district does not have an allotted number of snow days set aside. But she said it does always plan excess time when making its yearly calendar in case of emergencies like this.

Allen said potential make-up days are based on instructional hours that the state requires.

She said if snow days continue happening, the main worry would likely be the high schools because they would be the tightest schedule. The state of Idaho requires high school students, grades 9-12, to have 990 hours of instructional time. So the more days the district has to cancel, the more hours high schools would have to make up.

However, Allen said even if make-ups do become necessary, she doesn’t anticipate the district would have to extend the school year at all. She said there are several options it can consider if needed.

“We could end extend the school day, for instance, if we needed more time,” Allen said. “Or we could look at possibly taking a professional development day, or a parent teacher conference day, and making it an instructional day.”

Allen said the district may also even have to look at it on a grade-by-grade basis because of the number of instructional hours.

Kindergarten is required by the state to have 450 hours. First through third grade is 810 hours. And fourth through the eighth grade is 900 hours.

So if lower grades meet their required hours, but upper grades are short, it could be only the higher grade levels that might have to go to slightly longer days.

The district said it has a lot of options it could look at if it becomes necessary. But it said right now, schedules are fine and no adjustments or make-ups are necessary yet.

Allen said the district still has a little bit of flexibility with the schedule and snow days, especially thanks to some extra help from the state.

“I know this year we added three extra days into our calendar because we got more money from the state for operations,” Allen said. “So we’ve been down, we’ve had several furlough days over the last few years because of budget problems and we’ve been able to add back some days the last couple of years.”

Allen said the last time the school district had a snow day off was in 2012.