TCAPS has had 11 snow days in the 2025-26 school year. The district has five snow days planned when making the school year schedule because we live in Michigan with uncontrollable weather. This year we had more snow days than in years prior, bringing up the question of if we will have to make more days up from it.
“My personal belief is the legislature will pass a law [to modify the school year]. There was a lot of flooding that happened across northern Michigan. [Michigan’s] had a lot of worse flooding even yet and we think the amount of snow days and flood days that happened across the state. One for snow and one for flooding that had happened. So my gut feeling is we will but I just don’t know how soon we will be notified of it and the legislature will act. Hopefully soon but it might be in May,” Superintendent John VanWagoner said.
TCAPS has had a rough year from too many snow days and even floods. While TCAPS has only had a couple days off from this, many other districts have had weeks off.
“Because we have been given six days by the legislature, six days generally have had a lot of snow, a lot of bad weather. They passed the law to give additional days because we demand those. But some years we have only had one or two snow days. So the idea will have approximately 11 to meet forgiveness. It hasn’t happened much but it has happened a few times in my six years being here as a superintendent here in Michigan. So I have never been in a situation when I have actually had to make up days. So it will be interesting to see if the legislature comes through or not with that. Even some flexibility we may have with some of the training we do until we have an official response from that. So we will have to wait and find out,” VanWagoner said.
TCAPS exceeded its snow day limit this year, so technically there should have been a few more days added. Although because we were not able to get to school, the superintendent sent a demand for extra school days to the legislature.
“Well [Dr. VanWagoner] does a process of appealing to the state to ask if he’s forgiven because we’re only allowed 11 days and we’re over 11 right now so if they don’t forgive those days, then we have to make up the two extra days. I believe we’re at 13, we have to make up those days at the end of the year,” board treasure Scott Hardy said.
If the legislature does not accept the demand for more days than the school year will be extended. This will contradict with many summer activities; so, the superintendent tries his best so the legislature will not add more school days.
“They consider whether or not you’ve made every attempt to keep school in session and whether the reason you went over is because of extraordinary circumstances like snow or like flooding. We had one day that it was a flood that we couldn’t put the buses on the road,” Hardy said.
The superintendent tried as hard as he could to get students to go to school everyday, but the days we had off were because many people could not come to school because of the conditions.
“I just know that in a big district there are a lot of factors that go into calling a snow day. It’s fairly complex. We do everything we can to have school. I know Dr. Van Wagoner is always a priority if you can have school to have school so those kids could come in and still get a meal,” chief academic officer for elementary schools Dan Tiesworth said.
With all the work the superintendent has done on May 14 the decision for forgiving the snow days was accepted, and no extra school days. Having the last day of school on June 10.
“If I were to bet, those days will get forgiven. It’s really tough to extend the school year with parents have made plans and already have their graduation done, open houses, we also have summer sports teams that are playing so all those things factor in and when you bump out the school year. We then worry about attendance because we need, district wide, 75 percent of students to be in attendance. You get lengthened to worry about hitting that number,” Tiesworth said.
![“[She is First will] do the craft show which is in the fall at West it’s run in like the commons and some of the class wings and we usually just make stuff or we sell baked goods so it’s kind of like a combination of ornaments for Christmas and then just different like knickknacks and stuff that students make and then like cookies,” Polk said.](https://wshoccidentalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/New-club-leaders-she-is-the-first--1200x900.jpg)
