by ANDREA FRENCH Section Editor
Monroe Township residents and students are wondering how the schools are going to be able to make up the six days lost due to Hurricane Sandy. Therefore, there will have to be some changes to the school calendar in order to meet the 180 day requirement.
The six days that schools were closed were Monday, October 29; Tuesday, October 30; Wednesday, October 31; Thursday, November 1; Friday, November 2; and Monday November 5. Tuesday, November 6 was Election Day, meaning that schools were already scheduled to be off. Therefore, that day did not count against us. Also, in that same week, schools were scheduled to be off Thursday, November 8 and Friday, November 9 for the NJEA convention, which was canceled.
“When we had off for a whole week, I was so surprised yet unhappy. I felt sad for all of the people who suffered due to Hurricane Sandy,” says sophomore Catarina Santo.
In an attempt to make up days, school was rescheduled to be held on Thursday, November 8 and Friday, November 9. Ironically, there was snow on Wednesday evening into Thursday morning, closing schools on Thursday.
“I could not believe that when we tried to make up a few school days, it ended up snowing and we had off again! It was a crazy couple of weeks,” says sophomore Taylor Zeni.
The following week, students had off on Tuesday, November 13 for a staff in-service, but schools were opened in another effort to make us as many days as possible.
At that point, we are left with four days to make up from the original six. However, the school calendar had two snow days built into the calendar, leaving us with only two days to make up.
There are no more free days floating around to chose from, except for spring break and the end of the school year. As of right now, Monday, March 25; Monday, April 1; Tuesday, June 25; and Wednesday, June 26 are all days that students will now be in school.
Monday, March 25, the first day of spring break, will now be a half day of school. Monday, April 1, the day after Easter, is now a full school day. Though only two days need to be made up, four days were added to build in two additional snow days. If the two snow days are not used, the two Mondays taken from spring break will be returned.
“I am really upset that we are going to have to add all of these days to our school calendar. I feel bad for all of the people who planned vacations and things of that nature on the days that we were supposed to be off, but now have school. I just hope that we don’t have any more snow days to make this whole situation worse,” says sophomore Samantha Fasbach.
Graduation and final days cannot be changed. Two half days will be added to the end of the school year, but finals will all remain on the same days (6/17,6/18,6/19,6/20). Students will be required to come to school these last two days, and graduation will remain on Monday, June 24.
The revised school schedule is currently posted on the district website here .