Districts Scramble To Make Up for Lost Time

By Jeff Archer

While many of their parents had President's Day off, the 102,000 students in the Baltimore County, Md., schools trudged off to class--victims of an extraordinary number of days lost to snow.

But the students couldn't complain too much, having already enjoyed a three-day weekend thanks to a snowstorm that forced the district to close school the previous Friday. Feb. 16 was the 10th day the suburban district had lost this year.

Yet school officials, in their planning for the school year, had anticipated a need for only two extra days. As in hundreds of other school districts around the country, the unusually harsh winter has left Baltimore County scrambling to squeeze in extra school days, and hoping Mother Nature has no...