CHARLESTON, W.Va. — State School Superintendent Michele Blatt has granted eight county schools districts a waiver from the required 180 days of instruction because of bad winter weather and flooding.
State Assistant School Superintendent Jeff Kelley said state code allows the superintendent to grant a wavier if counties are under a federal disaster declaration or under a state of emergency from the governor.
“It’s pretty tight,” Kelley told MetroNews. “You can’t just waive for any reason. It has to fall within those guidelines.”
Kelley said Blatt received waiver requests from 13 counties and eight were granted. He said the decisions were based on a number of factors including how the school systems used their other options of making up days like banked time and virtual learning.
“I think we were very conscientious of what’s in code and our counties exhausting those items that are available to them in the code before coming to us with waiver requests,” Kelley said.
The county school systems granted the waivers include Boone, Cabell, Calhoun, Lincoln, Logan, McDowell, Mingo and Wyoming counties. Waiver requests from Barbour, Clay, Hancock, Harrison and Mercer counties were denied. Those systems will have to add days to the end of their calendars.
Cabell County Schools spokesperson Ashley Stephens said the district is thankful for the waiver of four days after multiple rounds of winter weather.
“For a period of time we had flooding, we had low temperatures, we had snow upon snow. We missed more this year than we have for a significant period of time,” Stephens told MetroNews.
Cabell County will now end the school year on May 28 which is two days later than the original calendar. Stephens said they didn’t want to have to add days much beyond that.
“By that time (students) have given all they can give, so those days are sometimes difficult in the areas of attendance and effort,” Stephens said.
Kelley said the state department let code guide its decisions.
“This year was very unique in comparison and I think some counties were looking for some relief and they reached out to us and we went back to code and let it guide our process on that,” Kelley said. “Obviously, we also want to weigh the fact that we are in the business of educating students and we want to try and get to as close to 180 days as possible.”
Kelley said he was very impressed with McDowell County Schools. He said Superintendent Dr. Ingrida Barker requested only four days to be waived despite the devastating flooding that closed schools for a few weeks.
“The superintendent down there values educating students and wants those kids in school and I applaud her and her staff for making happen,” Kelly said. “They were probably up against it more than anybody.”