Dec. 20, 2008 — Students and teachers who missed school because of Hurricane Omar's passage across the territory and the pre-Thanksgiving electrical outage on St. Thomas and St. John will make up the days, the Education Department announced in a Friday press release.
On St. Thomas and St. John, school was closed Oct. 15 and Oct. 16 for Hurricane Omar and Nov. 26 when the V.I. Water and Power Authority suffered an outage.
On St. Croix, all schools were closed from for three days from Oct. 15 through 17. Most reopened Oct. 21, but Charles Emanuel Elementary School and Alfredo Andrews Elementary School were closed for four days. They didn't open until Oct. 22. John Woodson Junior High School reopened Oct. 23 after being closed five days.
Schools on St. Thomas and St. John as well as all schools on St. Croix, except for Woodson, Charles Emanuel and Alfredo Andrews, must make up three days. The make-up dates are Jan. 22, April 27 and 28.
"We will continue to work with the principals and staffs at Woodson, Charles Emanuel and Alfredo Andrews toward modifying the school day to make up the additional instructional time loss at these schools as a result of the severe damage caused by Hurricane Omar," Education Commissioner La Verne Terry said in the statement.
Jan. 22 is a professional day. April 27 and 28 were days off for St. Thomas Carnival.
Terry and insular superintendents Jeanette Smith-Barry and Gary Molloy, as well as representatives of both the administrators and teachers unions, met Thursday to discuss adjusting the school calendar.
"The goal of the meeting was to select dates that would create the least amount of disruption and maximize on the available instructional time during the regular school calendar year," Terry said.
Vernelle deLagarde, president of the St. Thomas Federation of Teachers, said Friday that teachers had no problem making up the days.
She said that a couple of individual cases need to be settled because teachers got to work late because of the power outage. The teachers' pay was docked.
Tyrone Molyneaux, president of the St. Croix Federation of Teachers, also said the teachers had no issues about the make-up days.
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