White County Schools granted a waiver request from the state allowing an additional day off to cover for BonDeCroft Elementary’s closure on March 6.
Director of Schools Kurt Dronebarger said the district was able to recoup a snow day because Governor Bill Lee had declared a state of emergency for one of the snow days last January. Dronebarger said BonDeCroft is now using the same calendar as the rest of the district moving forward.
“It’s certainly beneficial from a data standpoint not to be running different calendars and have those problems to deal with,” Dronebarger said. “But it’s just nice for the school community to know that everybody’s on the same page and they’re going to be going to school at the same times, there’s no extra days added and no extra buses needed and those sorts of things.”
Dronebarger said the district still has its two virtual days allotted by the state as well as one day set aside for professional development that could all be used to make up any more missed days. Dronebarger said waivers like these are getting more common as the weather becomes more unpredictable over the years.
“I think we all that have been in Tennessee in this area for a long time, we’ve realized that times have changed,” Dronebarger said. “And we see a lot more tornadic weather events these days that call for some extended absences from school so it’s just that the weather changes, the times have changed and we see a little more need to reach out to the state department for some help.”
BonDeCroft closed for two days because of power outages caused by strong winds. The rest of the school system ran normally.
Dronebarger said any more days off for this school year would affect the entire district equally. Dronebarger said the district waited to apply for the waiver until now because it was wanted to go through its allotted snow days even though the state of emergency from January automatically grants an additional day off.
“There’s an opportunity if you have an individual school like that that’s out of sequence, you just have to run a different calendar for that school,” Dronebarger said. “But at this point they won’t have to make up any time.”
