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On a bright, balmy March day when temperatures reached into the 60s, local schools were still patching up a calendar that was crippled by a cold, snowy January and February.

In a special called meeting, the Jessamine County Board of Education voted Monday night to cancel a scheduled instructional day on March 19 and add June 4 to the district calendar as an early-release day. The district had already used the eight make-up days originally allotted in the calendar, but two had been deemed unusable and schools had taken seven snow days.

Feb. 15 and March 19 were both in the original make-up rotation, but bad road conditions forced the cancellation of the Feb. 15 make-up day, and school officials found out last week that the state government would not allow students to be in school on March 19.

That left the district with seven snow days taken and only six scheduled make-up days, leading to the addition of the early-release day on June 4. The board also voted to add May 31 (Memorial Day) as an additional make-up day if needed.

“Just in case something weird, like a spring flood, should happen, we’re going to put in our recommendation that our eighth make-up day be May 31, and we wouldn’t have to come back and ask you to make that up,” Superintendent Lu Young said.

After two snow days in January and five in February, the district was scraping the bottom of the make-up day rotation but was still in line to finish school June 3, one day before the scheduled high-school graduations in the afternoon and evening of June 4. The need for a change came last week when the district discovered March 19 had to be a non-instructional day. March 19 is scheduled as the Central Kentucky Education Association’s annual District Day — a day when the Kentucky Education Association holds regional “delegate assembly” meetings.

Jessamine County Schools had scheduled March 19 as a make-up day with the understanding that they could hold school if they paid substitutes for teachers who wanted to attend the KEA meetings. But after several districts asked new Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday to interpret a statute about KEA days, Holliday said they must be non-instructional days and neither he nor KEA had authority to grant permission to hold school on those days.

“We’re recommending that we do follow the law on that statue and we do make March 19 a non-instructional day so that the delegate assembly folks can all attend,” Young said.

The board approved the calendar change 5-0.

Despite replacing a full day with an early-release day, Young said the district would still meet the state’s day and hour requirements. The district did not put KEA’s District Day in the make-up rotation for the 2010-2011 school year.

This was not the only change the board has made to the March schedule this year. At its February meeting, the board voted to change an early-release day originally scheduled for March 16 to March 18 for convenience in grading periods.

Jessamine County Schools schedule for remainder of school year:

• March 18 — early-release day

• March 19 (KEA day) — students and teachers out of school

• March 29-April 2 (spring break) — students and teachers out of school

• May 18 (primary-election day) — students and teachers out of school

• June 4 — early-release day, last day of school

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