An interim Legislative committee is studying whether schools should permanently replace “storm days” with “virtual instruction days.”
Schools are allowed so many storm days — where they will receive foundation aid payments. The resolution calls for studying whether virtual instruction days would replace those.
Right now, schools can use virtual instruction days to either save storm days, or if they run out of storm days.
State school superintendent Kirsten Baesler told the Legislature's interim Education Committee that during the 2022-2023 school year, 310 school buildings in 113 school districts utilized virtual instruction days for snow days.
"687 days were used by districts to virtually instruct students because of weather or other circumstances," Baesler told the Committee. "The highest number of virtual school snow days used by a school district was 15, and the average number of virtual snow days used by school districts was 6.3."
The committee is to make recommendations to the 2025 Legislative session.