By DeVaughn Humphries Staff Writer
Detroit Public Schools were closed for three days this month after a record-breaking storm on Feb. 1 left over a foot of snow. DPS lost a day to the weather in January, too, and now people are wondering if students will have to make up days at the end of the year.
State Rep. Phil Potvin has introduced a bill in the Michigan House of Representatives to add three more days to the six days schools are allowed to cancel without having to make them up.
”It’s a fair number the way the snow has been coming in not only in northern Michigan but throughout the state,” Potvin said in an interview with MichiganRadio.org.
That’s good news for Cody. Last year Detroit canceled seven times for the weather, but Cody and a many other schools were closed three times for power outages. The district added three days to the calendar in June.
DIT English Aurelia Turner doesn’t think schools should have to make up days when the problem is a lack of city services.
“I don’t think we need to have more days,” Turner said, “but we need to better manage the snow days we already have.”
On the afternoon of the second snow day, reports from the city said the streets were plowed in a three-block radius of every school, but the next day DPS COO Mark Schrupp released a statement explaining why schools would be closed again on Wednesday.
“The district’s decision to close schools tomorrow is based on the continued unsafe walking conditions (particularly impassable sidewalks) created by the recent historic snowfall,” Schrupp said.
Sophomore Kianna Harris lives very close to the Cody campus, but she said the streets and sidewalks were still a mess when schools were finally open.
“Leaving our driveway we were stuck in the middle of the street for about 20 minutes because the streets weren’t plowed, and neighbors were dumping their snow in front of other people’s driveways,” Harris said.
Cody DIT sophomore Dominique Brown had to walk in the street to get to school on Feb 5.
“It took an extra 10 minutes to get to school and I was late,” Brown said, “but I just didn’t want to miss any more school.”
