Snow days add up, worrying N.B. students

MONCTON –  After nearly two weeks of snow days, students across New Brunswick are wondering how the missed time will impact their school year.

Fifteen-year-old Lucie Ford said snow days used to be fun. Now the grade ten student says they’re keeping her from her studies.

“The occasional snow day is always nice,” she said. “But out of the last two weeks we’re going on five days of school missed so that’s kind of annoying.”

Ford is worried the missed time will hurt her school work.

“We’re going to be pushed even harder and stuff to try and catch up which will be hard and the workload will be more,” she said.

So far this school year, thousands of students in the Anglophone East School District have lost nine days of class time because of bad weather. That’s nearly two weeks of lost class time.

Schools in Fredericton have lost eight school days.

Ford’s mother Anne Marie Picone Ford, is hoping all the snow days won’t cause a problem.

“I guess my big concern is they end up with so much having to be covered and then they get inundated with a lot of extra work. Hopefully that won’t happen,” she said.

The District’s superintendent, Gregg Ingersoll, said teachers are adjusting the workload.

“The teachers will have to adjust what they’re doing and make sure the students do get the curriculum in the three months we have left before the end of June,” Ingersoll said.

Education Minister, Marie-Claude Blais, said Tuesday it’s too soon to say if the school year needs to be extended.

“We’ll keep on working at it and make sure our kids are able to meet all the curriculum objectives there is for this year,” she said.