A sentimental winter tradition for students around the country, praying and participating in superstitious activities to gain a snow day is nothing new. However, no matter how many ice cubes go down the toilet students can control the weather so what happens to those days set aside for snow and ice?

More often than not, the allotted number of snow days given to the school are not used completely throughout the year. This has led numerous students to question their lack of use and wonder why these days are not repurposed.

“It would be great if they could end school five days earlier, so we’d get an extended summer vacation, even though it’d be only for a few days,” sophomore Kassidy Grossman said. “Or they could split them up between spring break and summer vacation, making them both longer than normal”.

Despite the hope that these days can be used differently, schools are not allowed to do anything with the leftover snow days set aside. Schools are obligated to be in session for 180 days and are not allowed to cut them short.

“If we use more than our allotted time (five days), we have to make them up in June,” Vice Principal Luman Strong said. “Even if we don’t use all of them, we still have to go to school. We don’t get anything off if we don’t use them.”

Strong continued to say that Chelsea has only gone over the given time twice within the last twenty years, stating that it is not likely to have to extend the school year. 

Due to the lack of snowfall this year, this news has left many students upset and disappointed.

“I’m really upset because I got really excited thinking that we could have the possibility of maybe shortening the year,” Sarah Capper (‘23) said. “Especially since it’s my senior year I already have to push through and survive the year, the thought of anything getting shorter, and finding out that it won’t happen, is really disappointing.”

As anyone would expect, students pray for any sort of day off that they can get, and when they’re told that possible days off simply aren’t used, it can be pretty crushing.

“It really sucks, but I wonder if there is any way to figure this out, maybe if there’s something we don’t know,” Capper added. “I’m pretty much having my soul crushed by this news.”