LANSING (WWJ) - Michigan lawmakers have decided that school districts will not need to make up four snow days that happened during a state-declared emergency.
After a partisan standoff, legislation excluding school cancelations during a deep freeze from January 29 through February 1 from counting as snow days was approved in the State Senate Thursday.
Existing state law forgives districts from making up six snow says, and schools can get a waiver for three additional days. However, due ao some particularly brutal winter weather this year, many districts reached or exceeded nine snow days; leaving them struggling to decide when to to let students out for the summer.
This included Marysville Schools, where Superintendent Dr. Shawn Wightman says this bill will help.
"We had one day additional day that we needed to make up," Wightman said, and the benefit right now (is) we won't have to make up that particular school day, because a lot of student and staff members have already made plans for their summer vacation."
WWJ Lansing Bureau Chief Tim Skubick said there was a holdup in deciding the issue due to a demand by Senate Democrats to guarantee pay for hourly school employees who missed work because of the unusually high number of snow days.
"The Republicans simply would not go along with that," Skubick reported. "The Democrats made a statement on what they wanted to do, but they didn't have the votes. So at the end of the day they concluded it's best that we help these school districts, because they need this time and they need this money, and that's what we're doing to do, and that's what they did."
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is expected to sign the bill into law, which will then take immediate effect.