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Students tweet their lack of snow day blues to Wake County Public School System

While college students might feel refreshed following their icy winter break, Wake County high schoolers took to social media to say they are barely skating by in preparation for midterms. 

Wake County Public School System cancelled their first three days of class this semester due to snow, and some students tweeted their concern to the district. 

KC Kurz, a senior at William G. Enloe High School, said it’s unreasonable for the district to refuse to reschedule exams.

“I don’t think it’s fair,” she said. “Everyone’s pretty stressed because a lot of our admissions to colleges or scholarships, or literally everything, is riding on midterms and midyear grades.”

But Dana King, principal of Millbrook High School, said the exam schedule should come as no surprise to students. In her thirty years at Wake County, she said there is no precedent for rescheduling exams due to inclement weather.

“'Why are we talking about moving exams?'” King said she asked Drew Cook, Wake County's senior director for high school programs. Cook had reached out to high school principals for their input, but King advised to maintain the schedule.

“We’ve had a lot worse snows than this, and we haven’t changed,” she said. “We think part of the conversation became more lively because of social media.”

King said she and her colleagues clearly want students to perform well on exams, but to change the dates of exams would create even more problems. She cited midyear graduations — scheduled for this Thursday at Millbrook — as a primary consideration in maintaining the current exam schedule.

Tim Simmons, chief of communications for the Wake County Public School System, agreed that the lack of precedent for changing exam schedules, combined with midyear graduation schedules, dissuaded the district from altering the calendar.

Principals were notified at the beginning of snowy weather that exam dates were not anticipated to shift, Simmons said. 

He said this year's calendar further impacted the decision to keep exam dates intact. 

“There were already fewer days in the second half of the year than the first — this actually evens it out,” Simmons said.

Despite the school system's response, Kurz feels disheartened and stressed.

“I’m not enraged; I just am disappointed,” she said.

state@dailytarheel.com

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