Returning from the snow days, the question on everyone’s mind was whether they would be made up. “I don’t think we should make them up, because they should be considered as a state of emergency,” says junior Jenna Bell. However, at this time, it appears that all of the missed days will have to be made up. In order to qualify for state of emergency days, the school district would have to write a letter to the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE). No letter has been written, because it has been indicated by the PDE that bad weather is not a reason to count cancellations as state of emergency days. Dr. Sofo said that “current school code only allows days to be ‘forgiven’ for lack of power, water, telephone or major physical plant failures, like a collapsed roof.” Dr. Sofo also said that it is possible the PDE will make a regional decision regarding the cancellations taken by many schools in Pennsylvania. They would decide upon granting schools state of emergency days once out of the snowy weather, around mid-March. Until any decisions are made, we will be making up the snow days, the next one being on March 15. “It would be the rain on my parade if we had to make them up; I was looking forward to the long Easter vacation,” said junior Paige Cooper. According to the school calendar, both the Tuesday and Thursday of Easter break are snow days. As of now, Freedom has used up all scheduled snow days, so both vacation days would be taken. However, Dr. Sofo said that his goal is to keep Easter break intact. He says that hopefully at the next board meeting, on March 4, a decision will be made regarding the fifth snow day. The board will look into other possibilities, such as moving a teacher in-service day. Right now it seems that students and teachers will be in school for the snow days in March and April. “It really stinks that we wasted all of our snow days in one week when we still have over a month of winter left,” says junior Stephanie Duez. Now we can only hope that we get no additional cancellations. “If we get another snow day or I have to shovel my driveway again, I am going to buy a plane ticket to Hawaii and live down there until summer comes,” said senior Jeremy Steder.