Summer camps, vacations and days by the pool are all activities that students looked forward to since the school year was supposed to end on June 17. Now, those sunny days may be pushed further out.
On March 13, MCPS announced that the school year would be extended to June 26 due to severe weather closures. The extension is necessary to meet the mandated 180 school days, as the county must comply with state requirements.
According to MCPS officials, the district sent a request to the state education department in February to grant a waiver, exempting them from the 180-day prerequisite based on their added make-up days, but the waiver was denied. MCPS had no choice but to add five instructional days to meet the requirement.
The county has designated make-up days for the school year, including March 20 for Eid al-Fitr, which will remain a non-instructional day for students, and June 18, which was ultimately incorporated into the extension period. “I’m glad they are keeping March 20 a non-instructional day because it’s not just for the end of Ramadan for people to spend time with their families for Eid al-Fitr and break their fast together, it’s also for families to celebrate the upcoming Persian New Year and be together,” sophomore Arousha Dolatabadi said.
The school year extension will cost the district $2.1 million per makeup day. Another significant challenge is the reduced time to prepare for summer school, which begins July 7 for middle and high school students. Also, if building construction is planned to happen, that will also be delayed.
The district and lawmakers enacted House Bill 1804 to be presented to the Board of Education, which shows the school has met the required hours rather than a fixed number of days. The county would not have met its required 180 days of school, but would have met the minimum number of 1,080 instructional hours.
The bill, which is emergency legislation, is beneficial for ensuring students complete the required hours while accommodating families’ plans aligned with the original end of the school year, such as summer camps and travel. The bill’s scheduled hearing with the Senate is set for March 24.
Sophomore Meghna Sharma’s travel plans conflict with the school year extension. “I won’t be able to attend school during the extended days because my family already has travel planned for the summer. We’ll be going back to Greece, so I won’t be in the area during that time,” Sharma said.
The school day extension will not only pose problems for summer school prep, but also for student work. “I won’t be able to come to school due to work, as I work at a camp and we start the week after school was supposed to end on [June] 17. Also, since grades close the same Friday or are supposed to, there’s no point in my going. Many people have vacations starting that week or work, including a lot of my friends in my classes, and I wouldn’t want to go if none of them are there,” junior Noa Lucas said.
