MIDCOAST — Monday was a holiday, but if it weren’t, what are the chances it would have been a snow day?

Rewind to Saturday night when second blizzard of the season arrived. Forecasts suggested Sunday morning would find our already-absurd mounds of snow hidden beneath more of the stuff that would need to be plowed into even bigger absurd mounds. As we know now, that didn’t happen. There were a few wily inches blown up into unpredictable drifts here and there. And it was cold, but the odds of a snow day would have been low, right? 

A few years back, a New Jersey sixth grader named David Sukhin wrote a clever program that could predict with convincing accuracy the chance of a snow cancellation at any school in the country.

Aside from the fact that it was invented by a middle schooler, part of the charm of Sukhin’s Snow Day Calculator was that it asked for only three pieces of information from the user: zip code; type of school (public or private, urban or rural); and how many snow days had been logged to date.

The first two questions pointed naturally to data sets — weather forecasts and local road conditions —  but the last suggested something else: that officials are less likely to cancel school if they’d already done so a certain number of times.

Steady waves of snowstorms have forced the snow day question often enough here in the past month. At times, the weather has been so overwhelming that it’s hard to imagine schools openings. More often it could go either way, and when that’s the case, other factors come into play.

Maine law requires school districts to hold 175 student days. With few exceptions, today's snow day is tomorrow’s late-Spring school day. Some districts pad their calendars in anticipation of snow cancellations, but the number of days that students attend is the same as in districts that don’t

Locally, there’s been conjecture about school running into July. Among the districts we surveyed, none had kept students home enough times this year to be all that close. But as one administrator pointed out, there’s a lot of winter left.

So what to do?

An option regularly exercised by superintendents is the partial school day. Maine law allows districts to count late starts and early dismissals toward their 175-day quota. In a state that sometimes gets a lot of snow, it’s a practical rule, but it also rewards districts that can thread the needle. 

Where David Sukhin’s app wins the Internet from within a luxurious buffer of probability — any prediction shy of 100-percent on Snow Day Calculator amounts to a “maybe” — school administrators ultimately have to make a call.

Penbaypilot.com checked in with a few districts to see how they decide to cancel school, how many snow days they’ve racked up this year, and whether that number is part of the equation when the snow starts falling.
 

RSU 20 - Belfast, Belmont, Morrill, Northport, Searsmont, Searsport, Stockton Springs, Swanville

Closings: 6
Late start or early release: 3
Scheduled last student day: June 11
Current last student day: June 19 or 22

"It has been an unusual winter to say the least," said Kevin McAvoy, transportation director for RSU 20. "We've had crews coming in to plow just so we have room for more snow."

McAvoy said the district needs to keep emergency lanes open to school buildings even if students or teachers ultimately stay home. As a result, his crew gets an early look at road conditions.

"They'll let us know," he said. "For the most part, you'd be surprised at how good traction they get, especially with the extra weight. They do good on some of these slippery roads as long as they can keep cars from cutting them off."

Superintendent Brian Carpenter said he considers McAvoy's advice, along with weather models, before making a call about a snow day. But the school calendar is never a factor.

"Theoretically, it could be the end of June before they get out," he said. "I'd rather have them go [to school on] Saturdays and get out earlier."

Carpenter plans to seek a waiver from the Department of Education Commissioner for at least the one day that was declared a state of emergency. Other district officials have talked about doing the same.

"The governor told us to stay off the roads, so it basically shut us down," he said.

Five of the district's eight towns are set to split off as RSU 71 on July 1. If the school year is not completed by then, it's not clear who would be in charge. But as of early February, Carpenter wasn't worried. A late-running school year would throw off summer job schedules among other things.

"I'm going to be way ahead of that," he said.

RSU 3 - Brooks, Freedom, Jackson, Knox, Liberty, Monroe, Montville, Thorndike, Troy, Unity, Waldo

Closings: 3
Late start or early release: 4
Scheduled last student day: June 12
Current last student day:  June 18

Superintendent Heather Perry said eating into summer vacation isn't a factor in whether she calls off school. It's all about safety, she said. But that doesn’t mean simply keeping buses off snowy roads.

"With 440 square miles of rural territory, and with the understanding that many parents are blue collar and have to work anyway, I may push a little more," she said.

Push to have school, that is. Perry said a snow days can leave parents scrambling for alternative caretaking arrangements, which can mean more time spent in cars on slippery roads.

"On a bus with a professional driver may be the safest place for them to be,"  she said.

MSAD 28/Five town CSD - Appleton, Camden, Hope, Lincolnville, Rockport

Closings: 8
Late start or early release: 0
Scheduled last student day: June 17 (includes 5 snow days)
Current last student day: TBD

Contact Ethan Andrews at: news@penbaypilot.com