Since school was closed on Oct. 29, Oct. 30, and Oct. 31 due to Hurricane Sandy, JC only has one snow day left for the remainder of the year.
Now that the hurricane has passed, a decision must be made about what to do with the school days that were lost. “Nothing has been announced yet by the Maryland State Department of Education as to whether or not we have to make up those days,” Principal Madelyn Ball said. Therefore, those three days are counted as snow days, which is the total number of snow days built into JC’s schedule.
To make up for one of the days lost, JC decided to re-open school on Nov. 5 when students were originally supposed to have a day off for Faculty Professional Day. As a result, one snow day remains for the rest of the year.
“There are no further plans at this time to change the schedule for further days off,” Ball said. “At this point there is no need to make up the days because everyone has a certain number of days built into their schedule. This may change if there are further emergency days due to snow.”
The devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy was tremendous, especially in New York and New Jersey. “I think it did more damage than I expected. I was only expecting a little bit of rain and power outages,” freshman Evan Moore said.
“There was definitely widespread damage … trees on houses, trees down everywhere. [However,] this hurricane wasn’t as bad [as last year’s] because a lot of the trees had already lost their leaves,” licensed tree expert Mark Driver said.
Because JC had “minimal damage to the property,” Ball and Vice Principal Gary Scholl decided school would open Nov. 1 and Nov. 2, whether Harford Country Public Schools did or not, according to Ball. Harford County Public Schools ended up reopening Nov. 1 as well.
“We needed to announce before Harford County so that everyone could make appropriate plans. Even though we planned to be open, it was with the understanding that if families were without power or living on closed streets absences would be excused,” Ball said.
In addition, Scholl explained that public schools were not in session on Nov. 2 due to an already scheduled day off. “We were afraid since they were going to be off [on Friday] that they might just take Thursday as well, and we did not want to do that,” Scholl said. “We just thought it was important to get students and faculty back in doing what we do, which is learning.”
According to Scholl, the building re-gained power Oct. 31. It had previously lost power some time during the afternoon of Oct. 29.
JC was not the only building that lost power. Students and teachers also suffered from power outages. “It was inconvenient without power and heat, especially since it’s been dark out so early,” senior Julia Mrowiec said.
As for the play, the cast of “Singin’ in the Rain” still performed, opening on Nov. 1. “Of course it shook us up a bit. A lot of us weren’t sure if we would perform this weekend, but we got it together and pulled through,” senior Kristina Aragon said.
Sydney Setree is a managing editor for the Patriot and jcpatriot.com