Snow Day Update II – Balancing the Trimesters
Several comments on my previous blog post about snow days asked about adjusting the schedule to add days/time to the 2nd trimester at the high school vs. the end of the year. (The 2nd trimester currently ends on March 13th.) The idea behind it is to better balance the days between trimesters to allow for similar content to be covered in each trimester.
It is important to note, the original school calendar called for 58 days in the 1st trimester, 64 days in the 2nd trimester and 53 days in the 3rd trimester. With the 8 days gone from the middle trimester – it is now 58/56/53 – which is actually more balanced. If we add 2 make-up days at the end of school, it would be 58/56/55.
At this point, we are not planning to adjust the 2nd trimester schedule. We do understand that staff planning for 64 and adjusting to 56 is not easy and will likely mean the final course exam may be altered, however, adding a day or two will not solve that issue and will further shorten the 3rd trimester.
Scot Graden's Blog 
I believe that the days should be added onto 2nd trimester because the schedule (days in 3rd tri v. days in 2nd tri) has already been messed up prior to the school year. Although, having a shorter 3rd trimester will cause issues for teachers, this current trimester has felt a large affect from the snowdays. I know, as a student, that my teachers have to skip things in their schedule to make sure their students are prepared for the upcoming final exams. How the set up for the end of the trimester is we could get 1 and 1/2 days made up by making Thursday a whole day and having school on Friday. I believe it is a much better idea to add some time onto this trimester instead if 3rd because teachers must already plan for the shorter 3rd trimester schedule, whereas teachers now must skip information our entire lessons because they have lost over a week of school this current trimester.