Make N.C. snow days great again
Let's stop pretending remote learning works. Fix the law and let kids enjoy the snow.
North Carolina’s school calendar laws have been a mess for years.
I was in high school when the 2004 law went into effect that required school districts to start classes at the end of August rather than earlier in the month.
It was designed to encourage more beach vacations. But it also had the effect of pushing mid-year exams until after winter break, which has been a bane of N.C. high schoolers ever since. For that very reason, fully 1 in 4 school districts in North Carolina do not obey the school calendar law at this point.
The General Assembly has been pressured to change those rules in recent years, but hasn’t taken up the issue. Our legislature has, however, fiddled around the edges — particularly when it comes to bad weather make-up days.
Since there hadn’t been snow in most of North Carolina for a long time, it hasn’t been much of an issue. But with two snow events in the Piedmont in the last two weeks, parents are just now finding out that the laws have gotten even messier.
