Wake County students to attend school on Presidents Day for snow makeup

What had been a teacher workday and a federal holiday for many families will instead be an instructional day in Wake and Orange counties as school systems make up earlier snow closures. Wake County Public Schools and Orange County Schools converted the Monday, Feb. 16 workday into a student makeup day to replace winter-weather cancellations in early February.

All Wake County students, with the exception of Wake STEM students, will have school on Monday, Feb. 16. Wake STEM has a makeup day on Tuesday, Feb. 17, instead, WRAL reported. Wake County officials said the change covers a canceled in-person day on Feb. 2; year-round Track 3 students do not need a makeup because they were tracked out on the original snow day. The Wake County school system could have avoided having a makeup day on Presidents Day by using one of its remaining remote learning days. But district officials said they wanted to preserve in-person instructional time after so many closures and delayed openings, according to reporting aggregated by Yahoo.

Orange County Schools similarly converted what had been an optional teacher workday on Feb. 16 into a student makeup day for both traditional and year-round calendars to replace a Feb. 3 snow day. Johnston County Public Schools is taking a different approach: it will turn a teacher workday on March 9 into a makeup day for a Feb. 5 snow day, though the Johnston County Career and Technical Leadership Academy and the Johnston County Early College Academy are exempt from that March 9 change. Durham Public Schools and Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools have not scheduled makeup days so far.

The decision to hold in-person classes on a federal holiday underscores tensions for families balancing safety, travel and attendance. Local reporting noted that over three inches of snow was recorded during a Jan. 31 storm and that “snow covers Hillsborough Street” in photos from that event. With more than 60 magnet schools in Wake County, many students and staff travel long distances to school; that geography raises safety concerns when roads remain icy or uncleared. As one North Carolina high school senior told local reporters, “I live like 30 minutes away from the school. A lot of my roads didn’t get cleared until a day or two after the initial snow. If school weren’t delayed, my mom definitely wouldn’t let me drive. But I don’t want to miss any school and rack up absences, so each night I was just waiting for the notification [that it would be delayed].”

Beyond logistics, the trades between preserving in-person instruction and protecting health and safety intersect with equity. Students who rely on school transportation, families without flexible childcare, and those who travel farther to magnet or specialty programs may face disproportionate burdens from last-minute calendar changes. Districts say they are prioritizing classroom time after a run of closures, but the choice shifts other costs onto families and school staff.

Parents and caregivers should expect school to be in session for most Wake County and Orange County students on Monday, Feb. 16, with Wake STEM students attending Tuesday, Feb. 17, and Johnston County students using March 9 for a makeup. Districts could still issue updates on transportation or extracurricular schedules; for now, the changes restore lost instructional time while reigniting familiar tradeoffs between safety, instruction and access.