District, Legislative Leaders Talk Calamity Days

CENTRAL OHIO -- Several Central Ohio schools, including Columbus City Schools, used a fourth calamity day Thursday. Some classrooms could remain dark tomorrow, too. 

With no calamity days left and a harsh winter on the way, are state leaders working on wiping these calamity days clean?

NBC 4's Mikaela Hunt worked to get answers to that question Thursday.

Columbus City Schools called calamity days a "tertiary issue." The district hasn't received any calls from concerned parents and weren't even talking about calamity days.

Getting students back into classrooms safely is its sole concern, CCS spokesperson Jeff Warner said.

Columbus City Schools will open its high schools Friday, but cancelled its Friday night football games.

Click here for football rescheduling information.

The district doesn’t base the decision to call off school on the number of days it will have make up or the number of calamity days it has left. 

CCS typically uses all five calamity days, and a couple of years ago the district made up one day because it went over the allotted days. 

Warner said the district will take up the issue once students are back in class.

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The district's current health and safety concern was related to food stocking. 

CCS wants to stock food items at its buildings. Because power should be considered potentially “unstable” while crews continue to work on circuits throughout the city, the district was worried about losing a lot of product in a worst-case scenario. 

Hunt has scheduled a meeting with Superintendent Gene Harris Thursday afternoon.

When Hunted asked about proficiency testing, which begins during the first week of October, Warner said the outage "throws a twist into it" because students and teachers have definitely "lost time." 

He encouraged families to focus on the homework students were doing before the outage and to take time out to read.

According to legislative leaders, districts have five contingency days built into their school years, and those days could help with the outage situation.

Contingency days are picked out before the start of the school year and can be used in the event a district goes over the allotted calamity days. For example, children may be in school on Columbus Day or a portion of spring break.

HB 142 passed this past year and adds another element of support for districts. If for some reason, a district were to use both its calamity and contingency days, HB 142 will allow the district to add 30-minute increments onto the ends of school days.

Beyond contingency days, legislators are talking with home districts to consider something extra to help schools bounce back from the wind storm.

One option could be asking to forgive calamity days when the governor makes and emergency declaration.

Nothing formal has been drawn up yet, because superintendents will weigh the options with their legislators.

Stay tuned to NBC 4 and refresh nbc4i.com for more information on this developing story.

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