Cancellations, delays affect school schedule
Because of the weather, two hour delays and cancellations have been scheduled. The makeup days are feb. 15 and April 2.
January 18, 2018
With the weather change, the Altoona School District received some two hour delays and cancellations. Students express a variety of opinions regarding the schedule changes. The first delay was on Tuesday Jan. 2.
Dr. Charles Prijatelj makes the decision if two hour delays or cancellations are needed. After school is cancelled, those school days must be made up to have the necessary days of attendance. Some schools have started offering alternative methods to make up those days.
“Online learning could be a substitution for cancellations,” student Jason Carr-Keefe said.
On Dec. 14, there was a cancellation while the weather was a low of 10 degrees. However, on Dec. 15 there was no cancellation and it was a low of 9 degrees.
“Cancellations and delays not being consistent gets really annoying because you never know what to expect,” student Kendra Houp said.
The last cancellation the Altoona school district experienced was on Jan. 5 when the weather was a low of 3 degrees.
“I believe that cancellations are important because if the roads are bad, you can not drive in that. Also, because it is cold it would be terrible for the kids to walk in,” Houp said.
Students have to make up the two cancellations on Feb. 15, 2018 and April 2, 2018.
“I think cancellations should be made up at the beginning of August,” Carr-Keefe said.
Two hour delays and cancellations are put into place because of the weather conditions. Altoona has students who walk to school without coats on days during these cold winter days.
“I think to help the kids who come to school without a jacket we could donate stuff to the school like donating clothes that we don’t use,” Carr-Keefe said.
During two hour delays, students’ classes are shortened, some being longer than the other.
“There is less learning time on two hour delay days,” Carr-Keefe said.
The cut-off for two hour delays and cancellations is to be put into place before or at 5:30 A.M.
“I feel as though it’s hard for the school to tell before school is out, but also when they tell us at 8 p.m. when something is going in effect, I get irritated since we had since we had to wait so long until we got told,” Houp said.
“This cold weather affects us by not really wanting to do anything because everybody at this point just gets tired and when there is no snow, there’s nothing to do, and we are just inside the entire day,” Houp said.
Students and parents can keep track of delays and cancellations in a variety of ways including automated text messages from the district and TV stations, online resources and television messages.
