Impact of Snow Days on Winchester Schools

With all the snow that’s fallen so far this winter, a few more snow days and the school calendar could start to be impacted.

According to Superintendent William McAlduff, when the calendar is published, the School Department indentifies 180 days of school. And that calendar assumes there will be five snow days.

So far the schools have used four snow days. According to McAlduff, if the schools run out of snow days, February vacation will not be impacted and removing days off that are already on the calendar would be the last thing the school department would do.

At the beginning of September, the school year was scheduled to end on June 17. For each snow day, Winchester adds an extra day to the end of the year. Right now, four days have been added, which pushes the last day of school to June 23.

McAlduff said that the school year will not go past June 30, but that still gives Winchester another five snow days before the school department will have to adjust its schedule.

“We always look at June 30 as the cutoff,” McAlduff said. “Right now I’m not even thinking about running out of days. We have five more days available until we hit June 30. I won’t even start to think about alternative plans until after February vacation and I’ll see where we are.”

According to McAlduff, nine days built into the end of June should be enough to make it through the rest of the winter, but if February and March produce more snowstorms, then McAlduff said he and the School Committee would have to look at alternatives.

“My recommendation would be that we would continue to make up snow days in June as the storms come up,” McAlduff said. “We will not make up days in February vacation. And we will only make up days in other vacations as a last resort, but I don’t see that happening.”