Fifteen area school districts in the Miami Valley, as well as a couple of private schools, have taken steps to allow students to make up calamity days at home if the weather turns bad this winter.

In Clark County, Clark-Shawnee Local Schools and the Springfield-Clark Career Tech Center have signed up for the option.

A two-year-old state law lets districts offer online lessons or “blizzard bags” that students can use to make up the work.

Ohio law currently gives school districts five calamity days. After that, districts must schedule make-up days for each day missed.

Clark-Shawnee Superintendent Gregg Morris recalled that two winters ago — when districts were given only three calamity days — his district ended up using nine calamity days so students had to make up six days.

“This is a pilot,” he said. “I guess it isn’t officially called that, but we think that it can be a better situation than some of the make-up options that we’ve had.”

Previously, schools have been allowed to add time to the school day or extra days at the end of the year.

Last year’s mild winter resulted in his district using no calamity days so the online lesson plans were never used.

Those plans may be updated for use this winter, for which the Farmers’ Almanac is predicting “plenty of cold and snow” for the eastern half of the United States.

Clark-Shawnee’s Assistant Superintendent Brian Kuhn said teachers must have their plans posted on the teacher web pages and hard copies available at the principal’s office by the end of October.

The lessons are mostly reinforcement of concepts already covered in class, Clark-Shawnee’s Morris said. Students would likely be told when they return to school that they have a period of time, such as two weeks, to complete the materials and return them.

Most students in the district have access to technology that allows them to complete the work at home, but others may have to complete the lessons at school or a library or use the hard-copy “blizzard bags,” he said.

The CTC operates a one-to-one laptop program so every student has access to a computer.

“That is huge for us and it’s a good transition,” said Rick Smith, executive director of the CTC. “Students have their own laptops and we’re a wireless campus. As long as they have the ability to get at it online, it definitely makes sense for us to use the technology.”

Students who don’t have access to the Internet at home will have two weeks to complete the work. The CTC will offer professional development to teachers in October and January to help them develop calamity day lessons that will expand on the topic the class is covering at that time.