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PARKERSBURG — The process of creating the annual school calendar for Wood County Schools involves many checks and input sessions before finally being approved and adopted, and is created through a collaborative process involving a diverse calendar committee.

“The committee is a cross section of all stakeholders,” said Director of Elementary Education and calendar committee facilitator Heather Grant.

“We have parents. We have representatives from professional and service personnel, and board office employees from high school, middle school and elementary. And the same with parents (from) high school, middle, elementary. So we really have a very diverse cross section of the entire county,” she said.

Grant said the committee must adhere to certain state requirements, including having 180 instructional days and 20 non-instructional days, equaling out to a 200-day contract. She said within those 20 non-instructional days, they have to have two prep days for teachers – with one scheduled at the beginning of the school year and one at the end – and also six outside school environment (OS) days that the district schedules for the last week of the calender.

Grant said gathering public feedback is a crucial part of the process.

“We put out surveys to the public so everybody can give their feedback before we come up with a final calendar,” Grant said.

After the committee develops a proposed calendar, it must be presented to the Wood County Board of Education in two separate public hearings and placed on comment for the community to make any more suggestions before finally being approved by the county board and sent to the West Virginia Board of Education for final approval.

Grant said the calendar committee also considers family vacation plans when developing the school calendar and that the committee tries to accommodate public feedback on the timing of student breaks throughout the year..

“We try to set spring break, Thanksgiving, you can’t really change much there, but the Christmas break, the lengths and where they land, using stakeholder feedback,” Grant said.

She said, however; they encourage parents to be mindful of the potential for snow days when planning vacations at the end of the calender year.

The district utilizes equivalency time adding 30 minutes to the school day at the beginning of the year allowing them to have five days they can use to make up for any cancellations due to inclement weather.

Superintendent Christie Willis said these would be used for the five days already missed, but if the district would have to close again due to inclement weather, they might have to start using the end of year OS days to make up for any new days missed.

“If we go beyond six we’ll gave to make some adjustments,” she said.

Willis said this was especially prevalent now since the district had to close schools for the longest stretch in her tenure last week after the area received significant snowfall and frigid temperatures.

“This has come to the forefront because of this year’s weather situation,” Willis said. “We just haven’t had winters like this. We usually have several two-hour delay days, but we can usually go. So this was very unusual to be out five days.”

Willis said as of now, the last day for students is still scheduled for June 4 and the last day for teachers is June 11. She said the last possible day students could be in class is June 11 and the last day for teachers would be June 13.

Willis did say there might be options to use non-traditional instructional days (NTID) in the next school calender to provide more opportunities and options for the district to make up days missed due to inclement weather. She said non-traditional instructional days provide an option for county boards to rethink how instruction will be delivered, with virtual learning being an example. She said these can be used when traditional methods of instruction are not feasible. She said the district can use up to five non-traditional instructional days if they submit an application with a plan as to how those would look.

“We’re going to put a survey out to staff and families to get some feedback from them, and see if that would be something that they would be interested in,” Willis said. “We have until May 2 of this year to apply to use it for the 2025-2026 school year.

“If we get good feedback from the community, the staff, we can build a plan to submit. It’s an option we can use next year.”

Willis said a survey would be drafted soon.

Douglass Huxley can be reached at dhuxley@newsandsentinel.com