After Hurricane Sandy’s visit to Bel Air last month, students were overjoyed to hear a phone call for three days telling us that we were off. But now that we’re back to school and there’s no more crazy weather ahead, will we have to make it up?

The decision to close schools was made by Harford County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Tomback, with the assistance of numerous staff members, as well as outside local and state agencies providing information on future forecasts, temperatures, roadways, building preparedness and electrical power status.

Many students and parents had wondered how schools wondered what was the criteria used to decide when to finally re-open the schools. “The decision to close (and re-open) schools has to be made from a global safety perspective. All of our schools would have to be ready in order for us to open safely. On occasion, if majority of the schools are ready but a few schools are having issues, the Superintendent may close just those schools,” said Teri Kranefeld, communicator for Harford County Public Schools.

Once Harford County Public Schools re-opened the next questions was “will we have to make up the days”.  Our school calendar is built with extra make-up days. For the 2012-2013 school year, it has 188 days, instead of the 180 day minimum requirement. The Board of Education sets a date each year when the calendar is built and sets mid-June as a cut-off date. If a school year for some reason passed that date, the Board would have to vote to amend the calendar.

Although the three days were declared state of emergency, the state will not accept waivers unless the school system can prove a reasonable effort was made to make up those days. However, “a common misconception is that when the Governor declares a state of emergency, the days missed are automatically waived. That is not the case,” said Ms. Kranfield.

Last year, a rumor went around Harford County stating that we didn’t apply for a waiver for the 2 days missed from Hurricane Irene. According to Kranefeld and the HCPS Board, they did apply for a waiver and the waiver was denied because of the reason stated above.

Hopefully, we will not end up using any more of our built in days, and our summer vacation can begin as early as possible.