A cold and snowy winter has seen Oxford Schools nearing its snow-day limit for the year.

Oxford Schools has used up five out of its six snow days– school days missed due to snow, ice and frigid temperatures—allowed by the state so far, according to Superintendent Tim Throne.

While things seem to be warming up in Oxford, Throne said that future emergency weather could cause administrators to have to decide how to make up lost instruction time should winter storms cause further snow days.

The Michigan Department of Education requires schools to offer 180 days of instruction and 1,098 hours of classes to earn their state aid payments.

Schools are allowed to cancel the equivalent of six school days and still maintain their eligibility for aid payments under state law.

District administrators can choose to add days to the year-end or add minutes to each day to make up for time lost from snow days and other building closures.

If the district surpasses its number of available snow days, Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Nancy Latowski added that the district could also apply to the State of Michigan for a waiver.

According to Michigan law, the State Superintendent considers applications for waivers of hours for programs that will operate for less than the required 1,098 hours and/or less than the required 180 days during the 2017-18 school year.

If the state approves this waiver, the extra snow days would be ‘forgiven’ and the district would not be required to make up the missed days.

“Generally the state is pretty good about that,” Throne added. “If, for whatever reason, the state came back and denied that waiver… we would have between that time and the end of the year to get those (extra) days in. If there was another planned student day-off, we could say we’re going to be in session on those days. Worst case scenario, we would just tack those days on at the end of the year.”