Minnesota schools can avoid adding days at the end of the calendar to make up for snow and severe weather days this winter under a proposal set for a Senate vote on Thursday.
Negotiators from the Senate and the House of Representatives ironed out differences between similar bills in each chamber to hold schools harmless with the state for days classes were canceled due to concerns for health and safety.
Under the compromise bill, school boards could decide to count as many canceled days as they needed this year and report that to the state without penalties.
Under current law, school districts can be sued and administrators can face jail time if they don’t meet the required number of instructional days set by the state. Across Minnesota, some school boards dropped their spring break plans or considered extending their calendars into the summer months to break even.
Some districts have had to call nearly two weeks worth of canceled instructional days due to extreme cold, record snowfall and other inclement weather conditions. And with flooding forecast across the state, additional cancellations could be coming.
Sen. Carla Nelson, R-Rochester, authored the bill and said it was important to give school boards flexibility and certainty after an “unprecedented” winter.
“This was not a normal winter in some parts of our state,” Nelson said. “We didn’t want to put those superintendents in a precarious situation of determining are the roads safe enough for our students and staff to get to school? And if they’re not, then am I willing to risk not having enough school days’ and all that that would entail.”
The bill would also require school districts to pay hourly employees for the missed days and reimburse contractors like bus companies if the groups agreed to pay wages lost.
House Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, said she planned to hold a floor vote on the proposal Thursday if the Senate approved it. She pointed to the compromise bill as an example of lawmakers in the divided Legislature working together.
“I’m hoping we’ll see a lot more examples of that,” Hortman said. “This is how the process is supposed to work.”
Nelson said she was hopeful that both chambers could pass the bill and the governor could sign it into law before this weekend. Gov. Tim Walz has said he supports the proposal.