Harford County public schools have been closed for six days so far this year, and there are five more days available to make up for closings related to bad weather.
If there are no more closings between now and the end of the year, the last day of school will be Wednesday, June 17, for kindergarten through 11th grade, and Monday, June 15, for pre-K, since the school year for pre-K children must end two days before the end of the year for older students, according to school officials.
As it stands, Harford schools are headed for a June closing almost a week later than last year.
Schools were closed Jan. 6, Jan. 12, Jan. 26, Feb. 10, Feb. 17 and most recently on Friday, Feb. 20. School openings were also delayed for two hours on six separate days, most recently on Monday, according to HCPS.
In adopting their calendar for the 2014-15 school year, Harford school officials had added in 11 inclement weather makeup days to the state-required 180 days, for 191 days total.
With the latest cancellation of classes Friday, the days that schools were closed this year will be made up from June 10 to June 17, according to school officials.
If there are more cancellations, the last possible day of school would be Friday, June 19, for students in kindergarten through 11th grade. The last possible day for pre-K children would be June 17, according to the school calendar.
In addition to June 18 and 19, the calendar also includes three other make-up days, April 8 to 10 during the scheduled spring break. Those would be used only after the June makeup days run out.
The printable calendar posted on the HCPS website includes a warning that "Inclement weather days/emergency system-wide closings cannot be predicted," and families should schedule vacations after June 19.
Schools have been closed this year not only for snow and ice, but for frigid temperatures that have been in the teens and even single digits during the recent cold snap, as school officials had to consider the health and safety of students walking to school.
"When it's minus-23 [degree] wind chill factor in the dark, we just simply weren't going to send kids to school," Joe Licata, HCPS chief of administration, said during Monday's Board of Education meeting.
Licata praised the 70 facilities staffers and 250 custodians who worked "literally nonstop" between Thursday evening and Monday morning plowing parking lots and driveways, clearing walkways and repairing school mechanical systems to ensure schools were ready to open Monday.
"Since last week we had severe mechanical equipment damage to 44 percent of our buildings, 24 schools," he said.
Licata said there have been leaky pipes, broken coils and heating systems that "went down for various reasons," mainly because of the "extreme, extreme cold weather that we had."
He said crews spent the weekend, when Harford County was covered in 6 to 10 inches of snow, shoveling walks and clearing lots.
To give school board members an idea of the amount of snow removed, he asked them to picture the Baltimore Ravens' football field in M&T Bank Stadium filled with snow.
"Our crews removed the equivalent of 15 percent of that volume, for a pile of snow on that field 28 feet high," he said.
State law requires public schools to be open for at least 180 days each year, and Licata noted that school officials consider multiple factors before closing schools for inclement weather.
"The utmost issue in the forefront of Mrs. [Superintendent Barbara] Canavan's mind is, how is it going to affect the safety of our kids, and if there's any doubt at all, we're going to err on the side of caution," he said.
Licata said closing schools can be an inconvenience to local families, but "we'd much rather have a conversation about why we did something like this than having a conversation in the hospital with one of our kids, explaining to a parent what we did."
When it's an issue of cold temperatures, Licata said, HCPS officials must consider factors such as the wind chill, whether it is sunny and how cold the air feels, separate from the temperature on the thermometer.
"It's a judgment you make every day, based on the conditions, how the temperatures are going to change, what kind of impact you're going to have," he explained.
Board member Cassandra Beverley expressed her concerns for students who walk to school in frigid weather and asked Licata if they could develop a policy governing closing schools in extreme temperatures.
She asked how long students could "be outside walking, even when you are fairly well bundled up," and she noted the health risks of being exposed to extreme cold, such as frostbite.
"I think it would be a good idea if there were a policy, based on the information we've received from experts," Beverley said.
Licata said school officials across the state have discussed such a policy, but "I think it's not as easy as just saying, 'Here's a temperature, and that's the one we're going to use.'"
"Once you get to that number, you're stuck with that number, so there could be stretches of time when you don't have school if you follow that policy," he explained.
The 2013-2014 calendar included seven inclement weather makeup days, and schools were closed for 12 days, including Feb. 3, 2014, when they were open in the morning and later closed as weather conditions worsened.
State officials granted HCPS waivers for that day and four others, and the 2013-14 school year for K through 11th grade students ended on Thursday, June 12.
Any waivers for additional days that schools might be closed this year would have to approved by the Maryland State Department of Education. Such waivers can't be requested until after the inclement weather season ends, according to the HCPS website.