OXFORD – The Oxford Hills School District has used five of its six scheduled snow days, but Superintendent Rick Colpitts said Monday he made the right decision to call classes off Monday.

“I’m an optimist,” he said when asked if he was concerned about running out of scheduled snow days this school year.

Students can miss up to six days of the mandated 175 because of weather-related events, but will have to make up any more at the end of the school year. The last day of school is set for June 14, if all six snow days are used.

Senior class members may miss five days but would have to make up time after the sixth day, probably through some sort of community service, he said.

Colpitts said the weather forecast at 3 a.m. Monday was for flooding, rain and ice. The temperature hovered at 31 and 32 degrees and heavy rain was continuing. “We were told it would likely be icy. We checked with all the (Highway Departments) between 3 a.m. and 4:50 a.m. At 4:50 a.m. we made the decision not to run the buses today,” he said.

“It was a conservative call,” he said.

Colpitts said because the school district covers eight towns, weather conditions can vary from one area to the next.

For example, Colpitts said, his own drive to the administration offices in Oxford Monday morning was “awful,” between Peru and Route 219 in West Paris and then better along Route 26 into Paris.

Several years ago, the School District Board of Directors looked at using April vacation days to make up snow days, but that plan was scrubbed when the majority of teachers said they would not be available. A Saturday was set aside as a makeup day, but never used.

While the Department of Education can approve a waiver, as it did when the Oxford Hills Middle School went over its six days after a nearby warehouse fire in 2009, that is very rare.

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