D11 staff and students are facing the possibility of having to worry about what to do should the district call many more snow days. According to Principal Smith, if the district goes over the five-day limit of snow days, students will likely have to come back an additional day. They could also ask the state for a waiver, in which case, no extra time would need to be added.

Principal Smith has all the information needed to help with the confusion. On this issue, he said, “I’ve seen it done all different ways. My whole career has been at D11 for over 25 years. They could add more minutes, they could add more days, they could ask for a waiver. Because they’ve added 9 minutes to the bell schedule, we’re actually pretty good on time. [Adding time is] just out of our control.“

Mr. Smith revealed that if any new information about our schedule is to be released, it will most likely be around April. The number of hours required by the state for a school to be in session (teacher-student contact time) is 1,080. Coronado is in luck because the current schedule includes 1,197 hours this year. We probably won’t need to add time because that accounts for roughly 16 extra days built into our calendar, but there is no guarantee depending on how snowy our spring is!