The North Hills Administration is instituting a new snow day policy for the 2019-2020 school year.

Starting this year, we will (hopefully) no longer be making up any snow days.  Instead, students will be logging onto Google Classroom within the week of the missed day to complete their daily “school time,” completing assignments given by every teacher to make up for the lost time.  By doing this, any days cancelled for weather will not have to be made up.

“In 2019, I don’t think that we need to come to a physical building and look at each other in order to learn,” says Mr. Lesjack, a member of the new administration this year.  In an informal interview, Lesjack said that this new policy is geared toward the world of standardized tests, and thus making up school days in the summer is not beneficial (other than having enough days in a legal sense).  Making up missed days in June won’t be helpful for the AP Literature test on May 6 or for your World History final at the end of the year. Those makeup days just take away our summer days in the bad weather, and so we’re doing all we can to avoid them.

When asked how this new format would affect school teachers, Mr. Pedrosky said, “This new policy does not really entail a day off for everyone like it may seem.  All teachers still have to be readily available to help students until 2p.m., just like a normal school day. We still have all our normal responsibilities.” When the students do work that was missed for weather, if they have questions, they can still email their teachers and ask questions.  The teachers must be readily available, just like how they would be if in class. Again, this is in an attempt to not miss any instructional time.

Six North Hills seniors were willing to share their opinions on the new policy.  “It’s better than making up a snow day,” said Tyler Eisses. Evan Peluso said that “Seven hours in school versus doing work online at home?  No contest.” Six out of six were fans of the new plan, and they all agreed that that opinion lies in the majority.

The new policy just went through the school board and the state, and will be instituted for the current school year.