Franklin County Schools Superintendent Mark Church says the decision to close schools is very deliberative. He has crews out on the roads as early as 4 in the morning to determine if it's safe for students to get to school.
He says criticism from parents is common, but support is too. No one should have to worry that the slick roads may hurt them on their way to school.
That being said, the timing of the snow days the past few weeks have been a huge pain.
"I actually joked yesterday that I don't write my lessons plans even in pencil anymore, they're in dry erase board," said Amy Shaver, a Chemistry teacher at Franklin County High School.
She says the fact that every Friday thus far in the second semester has become fodder among her colleagues.
Shaver says she'd rather miss a full week due to snow instead of one day every week because it's harder for her and students to get into a flow. The fact that they happened to miss Fridays makes it even tougher.
"The last time you talked about something was on Thursday. They've had Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Come Monday, they really don't remember it, they haven't practiced it, so you end up having to go back and review and reteach which puts you even further behind and it's a snowball effect," Shaver said.
"I have had more questions in the past two weeks about 'are we on pace?' than I have since a couple of years ago when we lost 12 days to snow," Shaver added.
Shaver says she's a week behind because of the amount of review she's had to do, but the dates of those Advance Placement Exams don't change. In reaction, Shaver's had to give homework packets to be completed on the snow days.
"It's been a struggle to get them done on the snow day because you feel like you want to relax but you gotta get them done because you have the AP test in May," said senior Josh Harkema.
All this is further complicated by block scheduling. Shaver says with block scheduling, missing one day is like missing two since Franklin County has a four by four system. That means students take four classes one semester and four in the other. Some block scheduling includes "A days" and "B days" where certain days are designated for certain classes but students take them the full year. So hypothetically, those school systems with the A-B system haven't been hit as hard as schools with the four by four system.
