SENECA - Like school districts across the state and large parts of the Midwest, the Seneca Area School District is beset by the problem of trying to make up days lost to the snow and cold this winter, as well as fall flooding.

Seneca School District Administrator Dave Boland went over the most recently updated plan with the school board at their meeting Monday night. The district has some options in trying to make up for 11 cancelled school days.  

The district calendar allows for the first and third cancelled days to be forgiven, Boland explained. There are also three days built into the Easter holiday that can and will be used as school days to make up for cancelled days. There was also an in service day for teachers on February 15 that was converted to an instructional day. It still leaves five days that need to be replaced.

Seneca had planned an early  release day on Tuesday, June 4 to be the last day. The district will now use the entire week through June 7 as instructional days. Teachers will have a half day of in-service on Monday, June 10. 

The district will also add 12 minutes to the school day for the rest of the year to make up the remaining lost days. This plan assumes there is no more lost time to late starts, early releases or cancellations.

The goal is to have the first week of June be the last week of school, according to Boland. 

Last year, the district was beset with late starts and early releases. To date this year, the district has had just two with the second coming on Monday morning. However last year, the district’s first cancelled day of instruction occurred on February 20.

After some discussion, the board approved allowing students to engage in dual sport participation. Under the new rule, students would have to declare a primary and secondary sport. Going into the spring season, both the track coach Cody Sime and and softball coaches Erika Clark and Sara Wall support allowing dual sport participation.

Softball looks to have just nine participants and you must have nine players to begin a game. So, any absence would cause a game cancellation.

The track program at Seneca is building momentum under coach Sime and more participation would help to strengthen it.

The Seneca School Board decided the Monthly Recognition Award should go to participants in the Spelling Bee, Geography Bee and Civics Game Competition.

In other business, the Seneca Area School Board:

• unanimously approved a two-year extension of the successful North Crawford-Seneca wrestling co-op

• approved a five-year, $26,150 contract for Apptegy, an interactive school website that can be accessed by parents, staff and others

• learned there was a slight decline in the student count in the second semester

• learned Lori Nelson is pursuing grants and other funding for a large project that will allow students to learn how to use drones

• hired Justin Redman as school’s assistant baseball coach