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The Springfield New-Sun serves its readers by looking ahead to how inclement weather, including dangerous temperatures, can affect students in our region.
Perilously cold temperatures gripped the region Wednesday afternoon and records could be broken as the cold is expected to remain through Friday morning. But area superintendents say the extreme cold won’t break their state testing plans.
Wind chills will be -20 to -30 degrees today, and Friday has a forecast low of -5 and could break a record low high temperature of 12 degrees set in 1904.
“That’s the dangerously cold category. In that type of weather you can see frostbite develop in 30 minutes or less and hypothermia also developing quickly,” News Center 7 Meteorologist McCall Vrydaghs said. “Cover yourself as much as possible with scarves, hats and gloves. And limit your time outdoors.”
As some school superintendents checked forecasts Wednesday and saw today’s expected extreme temperatures, they said students’ safety comes ahead of the standardized state tests that are scheduled for this week across the region.
“Even if we missed a week, I’m sure that the state would adjust the testing windows,” said Graham Local School District Superintendent Norm Glismann. “We would never jeopardize the health, the safety of our students or our staff members just to get a day of testing in.”
With a windchill warning — which would mean temperatures outdoors would feel as if it is 25 to 30 degrees below zero — school this morning would likely be canceled in the district, Glismann said.
Most Ohio school districts begin the first round of state testing this week, with each district building its own customized calendar of which grades and subjects will be tested on which days.
And after years of taking the old Ohio Achievement Assessments in April and May, school districts for the first time have the potential for snow days to turn a carefully crafted testing schedule upside down.
Districts across Clark and Champaign counties said the March 20 deadline to complete the testing should not be affected because they have built planned make-up days into their testing schedules.
“Since it’s in the winter and we knew that there could be bad weather, all of the principals arranged a schedule that even if we had a two-hour delay, they could still get the testing in that day, and if we canceled they would simply put it on the next day,” Glismann said.
The Springfield City School District built a contingency plan into its state testing schedule that includes several days for make up testing, said Kim Fish, spokeswoman with the school district.
Southeastern Local Schools students were scheduled to begin testing Tuesday, but a broken heater at the high school forced school officials to close, said Superintendent Dave Shea.
“But the state gives us a 20-day window to finish the test and we purposefully scheduled ours to span 10 days, so we have a buffer,” he said.
Because the new state tests are in the middle of when winter weather can hit, some school officials believe the State Board of Education will be flexible if districts are forced to go outside of the time period given for the tests.
“Pretty much everybody is prone to losing days and I think they’re very understanding,” Glismann said.
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