Last night, the Delaware State Board of Education voted to forgive one snow day this year. For Delaware public school teachers, they are required to work 188 days a year. With the forgiveness of one day, that number comes down to 187. But many schools had at least five snow days or more this year due to the winter storms. Even though two of those snow days were State of Emergency issued by Governor John Carney, Secretary Bunting only put forth one forgiveness day to the State Board.
As a result, teachers could have extra days after the school year. There are other ways teachers could make up that time according to DSEA President Mike Matthews:
How snow buyback works is if a district needs to make up 21 hours (or three days) then the District can choose how that’s done (usually in consult with their local union and School board). Maybe they will add one day to the teacher year and have the staff make up 14 hours of APPROVED outside-the-regular-school day activities like staying after to volunteer at a family literacy night or maybe they will count that IEP meeting that happened before or after school as make up time. The state requires that every employee keep a log of their time to show they worked to make up those days lost.
Depending on contracts, some teachers could use personal hours to make up for that lost time according to Matthews.
For Delaware public school students, most districts and charters exceed the 1,060 hours students must attend school for each year. Some have already canceled a day off meant for professional development for teachers to make up for that lost time. So it is not anticipated that students will have their school year extended.
The Season Of Myths 
It’s not about the teachers folks, it’s about giving the kids time in the classroom. But apparently, time in the classroom has very little value for the education industry.
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On the contrary, I think a great number of teachers would like the instructional time back. Why does it take Delaware until April 20th to make this decision when other states manage to update calendars as the snow season goes along? At this point state testing has already started. Adding school days in mid-June doesn’t really help anybody, all the testing is long since over at that point and the kids know it. Keep up as the closings happen and claw back days off in January, February, and March so the instructional time recovered it actually helpful. God forbid spring break be shortened though. The teachers don’t make the calendar, the school boards do.
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Finally!
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/editorials/2018/04/20/give-taxpayers-clearer-picture-school-spending/532982002/
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For how many days did Carney place driving restrictions on the state? I thought it was more than one. Regardless, how can schools operate if there is one? I think some more collaboration needs to happen when these decisions are made.
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