School calendars allow for weather

staff report

Ohio’s public schools are required to provide 178 days of pupil instruction each year in a 182-day school calendar, but, in the event of emergencies such as winter storms, they can be excused from holding class on any given day.

It’s called a calamity day by the Ohio Department of Education, and school districts can ask for up to five of them during the course of a school year. The ODE must grant the district a waiver before the district is excused from making up the lost day.

Ohio’s calamity days, in addition to severe weather situations, can be used in the event of a disease epidemic, inoperability of school buses or other equipment necessary to a school’s operation, damage to a school building or temporary situations such as a utility failure that renders a school building unusable.

The ODE doesn’t recognize bomb threats, school closure for participation in athletic competitions or school closure to memorialize the death of a community leader, teacher or pupil as legitimate requests for calamity day waivers.

Schools in Pennsylvania have a different method of covering those types of emergencies, generally building two or three snow days into their calendars each year. Pennsylvania schools are required to provide 180 days of instruction annually.

The snow days are those that serve essentially as vacation time if they are not needed to make up days lost due to winter storms or some other emergency.