Spring break and snow days: High Point revises its calendar
Wantage. A snow day and power outage in February pushed the calendar so that the date of graduation may change.
The High Point Regional High School Board of Education passed a revised calendar that tentatively puts the last day of school on June 15.
However, the snow day on Friday pushed that to the following day and could alter the date of the graduation, pushing it to June 17.
However, Superintendent Scott Ripley said the state may observe Juneteenth on that day, which would not be a day the district could conduct school. Juneteenth, observed annually on June 19, celebrates the freedom of enslaved people in the U.S. at the end of the Civil War
“I’m not suggesting we can’t,” Ripley said. “I have to look into it. If so, we would not be in school on that day and would be going to the following week.”
Ripley said he could alternatively cut a day off spring break, but that it would cause far more problems than benefits.
The last day of school was further postponed by an emergency day on Feb. 4, when an early morning power outage struck. Ripley said early morning communication with the power company suggested restoration by 9 a.m.
Having already called for two-hour delay, he needed to decide by 7 a.m. “That was the last moment we could decide because once students are being picked up, you can’t go back,” Ripley said. “And you can’t have students in the building without power.”
He decided to close the school at 6:58 a.m. Power returned 18 minutes later.
“Once the determination had to be made, we couldn’t go back in it,” Ripley said. “That’s the nature of it, and we had to close.”
