JACKSON TWP — Though the Seneca Valley School Board last week approved the 2019-20 calendar, school officials are still waiting to discover if they will be permitted to continue using flexible instruction days.

The days that allow students to “work from home” after the third school makeup day are still up in the air after four years of participation in Pennsylvania's pilot program. That program was initially supposed to cover only three years.

Seneca Valley is one of a few districts that uses online learning to supplement missed school days rather than adding a few extra days in June.

Superintendent Tracy Vitale said she hopes legislation will allow the district to continue utilizing these nontraditional school days because of both the success of the program and the effort put into making it work.

“At this point, the Pennsylvania Department of Education is telling us that the pilot is due to expire at the end of this school year,” Vitale said. “They are also aware that there may be legislation proposed to permit all school districts to utilize FIDS moving forward.”

However, such a proposal has not yet been introduced.

“This is disappointing to those schools, like Seneca Valley, which have utilized FIDS successfully for multiple years and have worked out a system to deliver instruction in emergency situations,” Vitale said.

There are currently four snow makeup days included in the 2019-20 calendar: Feb. 14, April 9, April 14 and May 1. If the district is allowed to continue using Flexible Instructional Days, it will drop the latter two snow makeup days, which would then become vacation days for students. On the third snow day of the year, students would be required to participate in the at-home learning days instead. The first day of school will be Aug. 27, with seniors' last day being May 29 and an anticipated last day of school for all other students and the graduation ceremony to be June 6.

Vacation days include Labor Day, Sept. 2; Nov. 27-Dec. 2 in observance of Thanksgiving; winter break from Dec. 23-Jan. 1; April 10 and 11 for Easter weekend; and Memorial Day on May 25.

The calendar was approved at the Feb. 11 board meeting, but it may need to be altered.

“It is the intent of the Seneca Valley School District to draft a resolution to our state legislators supporting FIDS in the upcoming months,” Vitale said. “If the law is amended to support FIDS, the district would then embed those in a revised student calendar.”