Sun Prairie Area School District evaluates snow day plan

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) - With the Sun Prairie Area School District exhausting its three allotted snow days, it’s working through its plans on how to handle any extra necessary winter days during the spring semester.

The district exhausted the three allotted days in December, forcing the contingency plan.

“We are in a position, like many districts, where we burned the three days that we had built into our academic calendar for the snow days that we had,” said Communications Officer Patti Lux.

Lux said the fourth snow day would put the first make-up day to May 26, which is already a planned teacher work day. They could also look into adding more time each school day to make up for additional days.

“In Sun Prairie, we do not prefer to do virtual days if we do not have to for a number of reasons,” Lux said. “One being we have a large amount of students who do not have stable Wi-Fi, and then also we say every child every day, and we have a contingency of students in the special education program that cannot get learning and instruction from home.”

Others note changing previous off days could jeopardize plans made last year when the calendar came out.

“You know, they got these school year calendars last year already, right, and so they may have already made plans, and now you’re trying to make up a day, so who knows how many kids will actually show up,” said parent Nicole Johnson.

Johnson has three kids enrolled in the district and said they have a softball tournament already scheduled for a potential make-up day. She favors adding time to each day as the first response.

“That doesn’t seem as significant as adding an entire day, like I said of a holiday weekend, you know, at the end of the school year,” Johnson said.

As far as other school districts, the Madison Metropolitan School District said last fall that there were some snow days built into the schedule before it would consider virtual options. DeForest officials said the plan is to go as virtual as possible, instead of canceling school.

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