BLOUNTVILLE/MOUNTAIN CITY — Thanks to the wintry onslaught so far in the 2024-25 school year, Sullivan County Schools has exhausted all 10 of its available banked snow days.
And that’s after it requested and got an attendance waiver for seven previously missed days attributed to the flooding, tropical storm and general aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
And among the region’s more rural Northeast Tennessee systems, the Johnson County Schools director said she plans to seek a second wavier for snow days after an already-granted waiver for the Hurricane Helene/tropical storm aftermath starting in late September.
Meanwhile, Kingsport City Schools reported their system is in better shape with snow days, as is Bristol Tennessee City Schools, according to a spokesman and woman for those two systems, respectively.
WAIVER PROCESS
In Tennessee, students are required to attend school 180 days a school year. However, most school systems take advantage of a so-called snow day banking system.
By extending the school day by 30 minutes, school systems bank 13 days that can be used to “make up†for snow days or other non-student days, such as teacher inservice or parent-teacher conferences.
If the snow days aren’t taken, students simply receive an extra 30 minutes of instruction each school day. However, if students miss up to but not beyond the allotted banked days, they do not have to go on Saturdays, have long school days or attend after the school year ended as was common in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
JOHNSON COUNTY SNOW DAYS
During and following Hurricane Helene and the tropical storm it spawned, Mischelle Simcox, Director of Schools for Johnson County, said the county was hit hard. So it already has requested and received a waiver for 23 days missed in the fall, she said.
“I have a written waiver,†Simcox said Thursday.
However, a wintry onslaught has resulted in Johnson County Schools missing 18 more days for snow, cold temperatures and such.
That is five days more than the 13 days set aside. In Johnson County, she said all 13 banked days are designated for inclement weather.
“I am going to request a waiver, and I hope they (state education officials) will grant it,†Simcox said.
Part of the reason so many days were missed for snow, Simcox said, is that the roads and infrastructure damage stemming from the hurricane and tropical storm make clearing roads of snow more difficult than it normally would be.
SULLIVAN SNOW SITUATION
Sullivan County Director of Schools Chuck Carter said the Board of Education at its non-voting work session Thursday, Feb. 6, and the following voting meeting that night may discuss and address the snow day situation, although he declined to say yet what options might be on the table.
“We have used the allotted snow days for this year,†Carter said in an interview Wednesday. “We’ve asked and gotten seven days from the flood waived.â€
The Tennessee Department of Education granted the waiver for Sullivan, Johnson and other systems hit by the tropical storm, flooding and other aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
However, since the late September and early October time frame, Sullivan, the largest school system in the greater Tri-Cities, missed all 10 of its inclement weather days. Those also are called stockpiled or banked days. Three other days are set aside for inservice or professional development, he said.
The 10 days can be used for days missed because of weather, widespread illness or things like the water outage that kept Sullivan County and Kingsport public schools out when a water line burst cut water service to multiple school buildings in both systems.
“We have a couple of options,†Carter said. “We are going to be discussing options†at the Feb. 6 work session. The system’s latest weekly newsletter, which came out by email Friday afternoon, noted that a March 3 staff development day, when students would not attend, was still scheduled but was “subject to change.â€
Asked if the school board might consider cutting days out of the week-long spring break, Carter declined to say.
The school board of Carter County, which along with Unicoi, Johnson, Greene and Washington counties was hit harder by post-Helene weather overall than Sullivan, recently decided to cut spring break down from five days to two days.
School system officials there also had considered doing away with spring break altogether.
KINGSPORT SNOW DAYS
Meanwhile, Kingsport City School has used four of its eight banked days because of the Helene aftermath and later winter weather.
Assistant Superintendent of Administration Andy True said that of the Kingsport system’s 13 banked days, five have been set aside for professional development, sometimes called teacher inservice.
Of the remaining eight days, four have been used, and of the professional development or inservice, two of the four have been used, True said.
If the remaining two snow days are used, True said the system “can apply for a waiver if we need to do that.â€
BRISTOL SNOW DAYS
At Bristol Tennessee Schools, Penny Jenkins, assistant to the director of schools, said that the system has not had to request any waivers and still have four banked days left for the rest of the 2024-25 school year.
Of the 13 days, Jenkins said five are set aside for inservice days. Another four have been used for inclement weather, one for the hurricane aftermath and three for snow and wintry weather.
