THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 23, 1996 TAG: 9601230237
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY VANEE VINES, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Short : 40 lines
The School Board has announced that Memorial Day will not be used to make up for time lost to the recent snow.
Inclement weather forced the district to cancel school for two days this month. Those days will be made up on Monday, Jan. 29 - previously set aside as a day off for students but a day for teachers to handle record-keeping duties - and Feb. 19, Presidents Day.
Students will be dismissed early on Jan. 29 so teachers can spend the afternoon reviewing records. Because of the switch, distribution dates for report cards may be changed, administrators said.
A furor was touched off when Superintendent Roy D. Nichols previously announced that Memorial Day, May 27, would be one of the make-up days.
The prospect of having school on Memorial Day, when the nation remembers military veterans who died in battle, angered parents and others. Nichols decided to seek advice from the board.
``We are a military town,'' Nichols said Thursday. ``That is a very significant day of solemn observances.''
A district policy requires bad-weather days to be made up on the next available single-day holiday. The missed days were Jan. 8 and 9. One make-up day could have been Jan. 15, the holiday for slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
But Nichols decided against holding school then, he said, because many teachers and families already had made plans. That left Presidents Day and Memorial Day.
If weather causes schools to close again, Nichols said, the days will be made up by having classes for a half-day on March 29, another record-keeping day for teachers, or for half-days on Saturdays. by CNB