School officials in Buckingham have changed two dates on its calendar from student days off to regular school days to make up lost time due to inclement weather.

Division Superintendent Dr. Cecil Snead said the division recently made the decision to change Feb. 20 and March 9 (a professional development day and a teacher work day, respectively) to regular school days to make up for three lost days of school due to snow and ice.

According to Snead, schools are required to hold classes for 180 days, or 990 hours.

“Sometimes, the length of the school days for some school systems might be long enough that you exceed the 990 hours,” Snead said. “If that’s the case, then sometimes schools may elect not to go back since they have the hours anyway.”

Snead cited Virginia’s Standards of Learning (SOL) instruction as the primary reason for making up lost days.

“We wanted to make these days up because we feel we cannot lose any instruction prior to the SOL (tests),” Snead said. “We want to give our best effort at making sure we have our instruction in place.”

Snead said if more days are taken off due to inclement weather, how to make up for them would be decided on as the situation dictates.

One of the possibilities for additional make-up days would be making vacation days during the planned spring break regular school days. The other options would be to add days to the end of the year, or if the school district’s hours are more than what is required “dipping into the extra hours,” Snead said.

“I just hope we don’t have any more inclement weather,” Snead said.