Right after Christmas break, USD 373 had four snow days. Newton was out of school on Jan. 5, 9, 10, and 16 for snow days. Between snow days, TOC and Martin Luther King Jr. Day, students and teachers got an additional week off from school. Newton got around 6 to 7 inches of snow from the blizzard on Jan. 8
When calling a snow day, Superintendent Fred VanRanken has many aspects to consider, such as the weather, the driving conditions and how many snow days the district has. The district has snow days built into the calendar so students can get the required amount of hours for attendance.
“We really have about 6.6 days for seniors and about 8.1 for everybody else,” VanRanken said.
All students have to get 1,116 hours of attendance except for grade 12 for the year. Grade 12 has to have 1,086 hours of attendance. If the district ran out of snow days, VanRanken said this is where the late start protocol would come into play and other alternatives. The late start protocol is a two-hour delay where the school would start at 10 am.
“The first thing you do as a superintendent you consider what the weather forecast is. Then you time when the weather is going to hit. We want to make the call to parents by 6 am. Sometimes that’s not early enough for some parents. I get calls from parents saying I need to make it much earlier than that, but I really can’t,” VanRanken said. “We can’t make a call at 6:30. We just can’t make it that late.
VanRanken said calling for a snow day is much easier when other superintendents of surrounding districts also make the call. He is in a few group chats with other superintendents in the region and they all make reports to one another when they drive around in the morning to determine if it is safe to go to school.
“So not only do I drive the country roads, I also drive the residential areas where I know we pick up kids because like with the cold temperatures and amount of snow and precipitation we had on that Tuesday (Jan. 9), if it had just been cold we might have come to school,” VanRanken said. “But with the cold and amount of precipitation and knowing that a lot of those walkways were not clear you know I just knew we were going to take the day.”
Another aspect that VanRanken has to consider is Newton doesn’t have residential snow removal. There are only a few main streets where the town removes snow and does ice treatments.
“Ultimately the decision is mine. It’s either a go or no go. And I hate making the call. I get calls from folks that are angry at both sides,” VanRanken said.
Senior Agnes Tegner enjoyed her snow days like many other students. She said that the seniors having fewer snow days made sense.
“I guess it makes sense cause we graduate earlier so we have less of a term, but kinda sucks cause I would have to do extra work outside of school if we get more snow days. And like being a senior is already kinda stressful as it is and like putting that all together is like a lot,” Tegner said.
Tegner spent her snow days going sledding, baking and celebrating her eighteenth birthday.
“The first [snow day was on] my birthday, so we went and got Chinese food for lunch and then me and my friends baked a cake and then we went to Applebee’s. So we just had a chill weekend. And the other [snow days] we went sledding at Centennial Park. And drank a lot of hot chocolate, baked a bit, watched movies and talked with friends,” Tegner said.
Like Tegner, junior Chavi Krehbiel enjoyed her snow days by going sledding.
“I went sledding with my friends. We went to Camp Hawk and the hill out by the athletic park. And I had sleepovers with my cousins,” Krehbiel said.
Krehbiel and Tegner both said they didn’t have much homework since the snow days were early in the semester. Neither of them felt behind when they got back to school. Krehbiel hopes to have more snow days.
“Well, I like snow ’cause I’m a winter person so I like it. But I could do some like distance [from the snow] instead,” Tegner said.
