The Region 16 Board of Education (BOE) has officially made the decision to start taking days away from April vacation. All of second semester students have been waiting for this week to sit back and relax and take a break from school. While snow days are nice and all they become inconvenient when the number of snow days begins to exceed the limit that the BOE’s calendar has allowed for. As of right now, the region has had six snow days and any more will continue to result in the loss of April break.

This year break is the week of April 14, and as of now school will be in session on that Monday and Tuesday. If any more snow days appear in the near future than Wednesday and Thursday can be taken away too. Friday however, is a guaranteed day off because it is Good Friday and therefore, students will have at least a 3 day weekend.

Since the BOE has decided to remove days from April break rather than add them on to the end of the year, the last day of school will be June 20. The BOE does not want to push the last day back any longer like they did last year when Region 16 schools were in session until the last week of June. Just like this year, last year the region also went over the allotted number of snow days. However, last year days were not taken away from break students just stayed in school longer.

Some students of Region 16 are upset with the idea of April break being taken away. A number of families have already booked vacations to go on during break and they cannot get their money back so they have to go. This means that the work done on the days that there is school during break will have to be made up by students. However, another possible issue would be if too many students decided not to come in anyways and the school day had to be cancelled.

AP classes are now another concern being brought to the attention of students and teachers due to the snow days.For AP exams, teachers have been having to deal with the stress of having to have students prepared for May’s exams no matter how many snow days there are. Snow days or not, AP exams are still in the first weeks of May and teachers must have their students prepared. Due to lost class time, many students are having to work harder to learn the information on their own as there is simply not enough time.

While snow days many seem nice when they happen, they seem to carry a long lasting negative impact, which leaves kids wishing once again that they were not in school.