When a snowstorm turned a week of second semester into an extension of winter break, Rockwood announced their snow day schedule for the 2024-2025 school year.

After the seven traditional snow days, Rockwood will have up to five AMI days—also known as alternative methods of instruction days—before days are added on to the end of the school year.

“We thought, ‘now that we used four snow days in one week and [it’s already] January, we should probably let everyone know where we’re at,’” Mary LaPak, Rockwood Chief Communications Officer, said.

In terms of AMI days, LaPak said that Rockwood is currently in the process of sketching out how they will look.

“We’ll communicate that plan if we get to that point, but we still have three snow days to use before we’re even looking at AMI days,” she said.

The community has mostly responded with questions in regards to AMI days, LaPak said. This is because Rockwood never felt a need to talk about AMI days: the district hasn’t used nine snow days in decades.

“I think it’s more of an awareness and that everyone’s on the same page as to what that looks like,” LaPak said.

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Abby Scott

Rockwood relayed their snow day plan to the community on Instagram, Jan. 17. The number of traditional snow days and Alternative Methods of Instruction days fluctuate each year.

In previous years, Rockwood has had nearly nine or even 15 built-in snow days. However, due to the new Missouri Senate bill, Bill 727, the district has a new requirement to meet.

“We’ve always had a minimum of 1,044 instructional hours. But now with this new Senate bill, we have to have a minimum of 169 days,” LaPak said. “Currently, our student attendance days this year are 176, so that means we have seven built-in snow days.”

Rockwood would prefer to use AMI days instead of immediately adding school days onto the end of the school year. For next school year, LaPak said that Rockwood will have 173 attendance days, rather than 176. This means there will be fewer snow days allotted in the schedule.

“We will only have four traditional snow days before we have to move to AMI days, but we’ll still have five AMI days,” LaPak said.

After those nine days, LaPak said that Rockwood would have to look at extending the school year calendar.

When Francis Howell school district first tried AMI days in the 2023-2024 school year, they alternated back and forth with traditional snow days. This year, with Missouri’s new law that extends hours of instruction, the district has had no wiggle room for built-in snow days.

“We’re actually getting ready to do a fifth AMI day. Once we’ve used all five of our AMI days, then we’ll tack on traditional snow days at the end of the school year,” Connie Buckman, Francis Howell’s Chief Academic Officer, said.

To make the decisions on AMI days, Francis Howell surveyed its community. Buckman said the results were overwhelmingly positive that people still wanted some snow days in their school year.

“They wanted the magic of waking up and knowing that they didn’t have to go anywhere, do anything,” she said.

However, the community also wanted AMI days in place in order to still end the school year before Memorial Day.

“Unfortunately, the calendar this year hasn’t really allowed for that, so we’re using all five of our AMI days first and then we’ll transition to snow days,” Buckman said.

While Parkway and Rockwood provide school-issued Chromebooks for each student, Francis Howell School District does not, meaning AMI days can’t rely on devices. All work is paper and pencil based.

“Our teachers generate activities for kids to do at home that are not reliant on being online. They might post it online or have a copy of it in their Canvas page, but if you don’t have a device, you’re still able to complete the activity,” Buckman said.

In terms of receiving work, Buckman said there’s an entire page on Francis Howell’s district website regarding AMI days. Teachers create the work for an AMI day, and students have access to a Google Doc with every teacher’s name on it.

“Each of our high school teachers also has a page in their Canvas course that outlines all of their AMI work. At the beginning of each semester, the teachers provide paper copies to students who want it,” Buckman said.

Virtual learning during COVID and updated Missouri legislature caused the Parkway School District to look over their snow day system in the winter of 2021.

Chief of Communications Annie Dickerson said that Parkway regularly collects survey data from parents and staff regarding the school year calendar.

“Essentially, what people were saying was that they still want to enjoy some traditional snow days,” Dickerson said. “At the same time, ideally, we don’t want to make up days at the end of the school year.”

As a result, Dickerson said that Parkway had created a balance of those responses. Parkway only has three scheduled snow days in their school before they implement their AMI days, and they’ve used this same system for the past couple years.

“It’s worked really well for us, and we’ve had good feedback from our families and staff,” she said.

Since implementing this new snow day policy in 2021, Dickerson said that Parkway has only used two AMI days, with one being a few weeks ago and the other being a few years ago.

“In most school years, three snow days is enough,” Dickerson said.

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Abby Scott

The Missouri Department of Secondary and Elementary Education gives all school districts 36 hours of Alternative Methods of Instruction days. These hours are equivalent to five or six school days that would be added to the end of the school year.