Snow Days Galore: How Will MCPS Make Up for Snow Days and Do they Need To?

January 7, 2025

We are currently on the second day of MCPS school cancellations for snow (and my sources are indicating a likely third day may be announced soon – Update less than 20 minutes after publishing this MCPS announced schools are closed Wednesday Jan. 8). This article is going to examine how MCPS will be handling additional snow days and potential make-up days.

MCPS Likely Won’t Go Virtual

There are a few reasons to believe that MCPS is unlikely to go virtual this school year.

Code Purple was removed from MCPS Operating Status Color Guides this year

The guide states this about Code Purple being removed: “Note: MCPS opted not to include “Code Purple/Virtual Instruction” as an operating status color code for 2024-2025 because it is very unlikely that we would shift to virtual instruction based on these updated MSDE guidelines.”

MSDE New Guidelines for this year about going virtual

The MCPS operating guide also notes that “The Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) issued new guidelines for the 2024-2025 school year that school systems can shift to virtual learning for severe weather conditions only if they have utilized all of their “in person” make-up days designated in the school year calendar. The 2024-2025 school year calendar has 10 “in person” make-up days identified throughout the year, including 5 at the end of the school year.”

Equity Issues with Access to Virtual

Back in November, we asked MCPS Superintendent Dr. Taylor about the new MSDE guidelines as they relate to MCPS going virtual and he replied that his “proclivity is NOT to do virtual during an inclement weather day. That said, we may have to if there is an extended outage.”

He went on to explain that: “For what it’s worth…we don’t have the tech capacity that we once did during the pandemic. So…there will be access equity issues if we did”

MCPS Has Now Used up it’s built-in Snow Days

In the MCPS operating guide, they explain that two days were built into the MCPS 2024-2025 calendar:

“The 2024-2025 MCPS traditional school year calendar has two days already built in for emergency closures.

• Emergency Closure #1: no make-up day required for schools
• Emergency Closure #2: no make-up day required for schools
• Emergency Closure #3 and beyond: MCPS will identify the “in person” make-up days for schools based on those designated in our 2024-2025 school year calendar if necessary.”

The MCPS calendar identifies the following days (that haven’t occurred) as possible make-up instructional days for if 3 or more days are cancelled:

• January 29
• March 31
• June 6, June 16, June 17, June 18, June 20 and June 23, 2025.

The Calendar doesn’t state this but based on past year discussions related to this; Spring break days may also come into consideration (though in the past they were not chosen).

Maryland State of Emergency May Give Leeway

Governor Moore on Sunday announced a state of emergency for the state of Maryland due to the snow storm covering at least Sunday Jan 5 and Monday Jan 6. It is not immediately clear if that was extended to Tuesday Jan 7.

Some commenters and sources pointed out that the state of emergency could give MCPS leeway to ask for a waiver for some of these days to be able to not have to make them up.

The “Virtual Education for Severe Weather Conditions 2024-2025 School Year” (which was passed in January of 2024 and highlighted relevant part in the image below) seems to indicate that a waiver is unlikely unless potential make up days are also used up or “severe weather conditions are sufficiently significant to warrant waiver.”

I don’t know if a state of emergency is counted as sufficiently significant. It seems to me that a couple of snowstorms are expected each year where this wouldn’t be counted but that is something to keep an eye on. There does seem to be an expectation that the make-up days are used before a waiver is applied for.

Item number D.2.a is somewhat interesting in that it could help with getting a 180th day waiver for June 23 based upon the proposed make-up days for MCPS but that would mean they would probably use up all the rest of the days.

Conclusion

It seems likely MCPS is headed to using at least some of its potential make-up instructional days this year since this is just the first major storm of the year and it’s still early in the season.

We’ll continue to keep you updated on the weather, state of MCPS schools and how that will impact schedule going forward.

---