Weather, COVID, Threats: With Closures Mounting, How Long Will School Year Go?

The 2021-22 school year has been a challenging one for Michigan districts, with administrators navigating not only the usual snow days but closures due to COVID-19 outbreaks, staffing shortages and copycat threats in the wake of the Oxford High School shooting. With closure tallies mounting, public districts like Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS) – which must meet state requirements of providing 180 days of instruction per school year – will either need waivers for exceeding their allotted number of closures or risk having to extend their school year.

Michigan school districts must offer at least 180 days and 1,098 hours of instruction per school year and have at least a 75 percent attendance rate each day to receive full state funding. When attendance dips below 75 percent, districts lose a percentage of funding for that day. Districts are granted six “forgiven” days each year, or days they can close without penalty. Those days are often used for snow days, but can also be used for situations like staff shortages, power outages, and school threats. Remote learning days count toward the required instructional total and are not considered a closure or forgiven day.

With weeks of winter still ahead and Omicron still circulating, TCAPS has already hit its limit of forgiven days districtwide this year and exceeded its limit at a handful of schools. All buildings have had six closures – due to a combination of weather and staff shortages – while West Middle School and West High School have had seven closures due to school-specific threats. Districts can apply to the Michigan Department of Education for a waiver that provides up to three more forgiven days, for a total of nine. Those requests are commonly granted, but anything beyond that amount would require special approval from the state legislature or else districts to make up the extra days.

Making up days is usually accomplished by extending the school year or shortening spring break. TCAPS Superintendent Dr. John VanWagoner says “all those possibilities are conversations to have,” though he notes spring break is already short and shortening it further hasn’t risen to the top of the priority list. Extending the school year requires union negotiations and can pose its own challenges, including excessive heat in buildings – that scenario required TCAPS to release students early some days last year – and families having to change vacation, camp, or childcare plans. VanWagoner notes that because Traverse City is tourism-dependent, the school year starts after Labor Day, which already puts TCAPS on track for a later school year end than downstate. TCAPS’ school year is scheduled to end June 15; pushing that date back could also have local tourism impacts. “A lot of our local businesses are depending on kids to work in late June,” VanWagoner says.

VanWagoner is optimistic the state will grant TCAPS three more forgiven days if needed and says his main concern in the coming weeks will be having any schools approach that threshold. “Where it gets tricky is when we start approaching a ninth day,” he says. “If I do foresee us approaching that, we will look seriously if at all possible at doing a virtual option (instead of closing).” TCAPS could also decide to keep schools open even if attendance was likely to drop below 75 percent due to weather or illness, taking the funding hit to maintain an instructional day. Still, VanWagoner emphasizes that the district “is going to put safety before all else,” even if that means closing schools and exceeding the forgiven allotment. He points out that even with the challenges TCAPS has faced, the district has maintained in-person instruction for the school year, while many downstate schools have had weeks or months of virtual instruction. Given that reality, he’s hopeful legislators will offer flexibility to districts like TCAPS if needed for their forgiven days, another option that could avoid an extended school year.

Unlike public schools, private schools aren’t tied to the state cap on forgiven days and thus have more flexibility. Like TC West Middle and High schools, Traverse City Christian School has had seven closures already, including four weather days (the school closes when TCAPS does for weather) and three closures for student illness and staff shortages, including the day before Thanksgiving Break and January 27 and 28. TC Christian Superintendent Tyler Van Schepen says closing due to shortages was “definitely not a fun or easy decision to make,” but helped attendance numbers rebound to normal once school resumed.

Unlike TCAPS, TC Christian can absorb its closures without any state repercussions. The Michigan Department of Education does recommend that non-public schools “build a calendar similar to local public school districts,” Van Schepen says, with TC Christian modeling its breaks and start and end dates off the TCAPS calendar. “Our last day of school is scheduled for Wednesday, June 8, with graduation on Saturday, June 11,” says Van Schepen. “As of now, there have been no further discussions on adjusting the end-of-year schedule.”

Grand Traverse Area Catholic Schools (GTACS) is similarly unconstrained by state caps, though Director of Academics and Dean of Students Matt Bauman says the district places “great value in providing enough instructional days for our teachers to fully deliver the intended curriculum. So that means we are always keeping an eye on our total days.” GTACS has only accrued three closures to this school year, all weather-related. In other years when weather closures “have been excessive, we’ve really been able to avoid adding days at the end of the year by taking back other planned days off and turning them into school days,” says Bauman. “We don’t see this year’s days reaching a critical or concerning number and plan to finish on Friday, June 10 as originally scheduled.”

Meanwhile, TCAPS could have conversations soon not only about this school year but next year’s calendar. Construction delays have pushed back the projected move-in date at the new Montessori school from September to January. To accommodate the delay, TCAPS could consider starting Montessori’s school year four days early this fall, then add four extra days on to Christmas break. That extra time would allow staff to complete the move from the old to the new Montessori building over the holidays. Any adjustments to the district’s calendar, this or next year, will require extensive board and union discussions and state approval, VanWagoner says. “We will probably have to look at multiple options and see what’s allowable with the state,” he says.