The Dell Rapids School Board added two more days to the current 2015-2016 school calendar as a make-up for missed days to this point in the year. This decision came during the school board’s regular meeting on Monday, March 14th. Currently Dell Rapids has had school cancelled because of three emergency weather-related days and two days of school closing for the girls state basketball tournament.
School board member Matthew Weiland said, “As a parent of a student and as a taxpayer, either these hours are important for our students, or they’re not important. So what are we saying? Are we saying that these days are unnecessary and in a winter we have no snow days, they are going three unnecessary days to school? Or are we saying they are necessary and we should make them up?”
The school board has added days to the end of the calendar in the past according to Superintendent Dr. Summer Schultz and School Board President Tom Morris, but it was mentioned during the meeting that not all of the school days missed have been made up in years past.
“I think that’s because of the difference between an emergency day and a school closing. Because some of those were in a different quarter, a different semester. It’s unfortunate because they’re emergency days, and they don’t get that day of school. But it’s not necessarily that you can make up that particular day and what needed to be done on that day later in May. It can be a completely different class they’re in. That’s the hard part making it apples to apples, ” said Dr. Schultz.
School board member Steve Stofferahn said, “If we missed a day in November, that’s the second quarter. Those classes are all done and gone. Making our fourth quarter longer is not doing anything extra for those kids. We’re probably not going to miss any days in the fourth quarter for snow days. We should have adjusted those quarters in what we should have done.”
Stofferahn also mentioned, “Going into next year’s calendar, we’ve already set the position that we’re not going to take days off for the basketball tournaments. We have two days built in. We won’t have those issues. It will just be snow days. I don’t think it will be quite as big of an adjustment in future years.”
After a bit more discussion, Stofferahn motioned to move the final day of school from Wednesday, May 25th to Friday, May 27th, and to adjust the third quarter end date to March 24th. The motion was seconded by Schumaker, and the motion passed.