What Happens When Michigan Schools Use All Their Snow Days?

Aside from Christmas morning, there may not be a more delightful experience for a kid in Michigan than waking up to snow day! While getting the day off from school is a welcome treat for a school age child, it can cause parents to scramble for childcare. But how many snow days can schools take in Michigan and who decides if your school takes them?

Who Decides It's a Snow Day?

Though most districts rely on their Superintendents to make the call, in my personal experience most Superintendents take their cues from the bus drivers. These brave souls will put their heads together, sometimes the night before, other times at 3 a.m., deciding if the roads are too icy, the winds are too blustery, or if other conditions make the commute to school unsafe.

Folks, such as myself and maybe you, remember a time when we'd get six inches of snow overnight and spend the next morning glued to the radio waiting to hear if our school was cancelled! But six inches of snow was "only a dusting" in the 80s and 90s. We would go to school. Things change and precautions evolve.

How Many Snow Days Can Michigan Schools Take?

Bridge Michigan reveals as a general rule, each school gets six "freebie" snow days annually. Think of them as a safety net. But, if Mother Nature decides to flex her snowy muscles beyond those six days, schools must either beg the state for up to three additional waivers or start making up for lost times.

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This time can be made up by adding extra minutes or hours to school days. My kids had early release on Wednesday's, letting them out an hour early. The Detroit Free Press states that if they'd exceeded the allotted amount of snow days they could make up the time requiring that additional hour of time weekly until the reach the mandated 1,098 hours of instruction, or 180 days.