When it snows, brains shut off. School is forgotten.
With snow having this effect on students, why were finals not pushed back?
The decision came in a meeting between the three ISD high schools, Liberty, Issaquah, and Skyline, and with the school board in the weeks leading up to finals.
“Looking at the snow days, we knew we weren’t going to be able to move the end of the semester,” Liberty principal Sean Martin said.
There were three reasons: work contracts, the required number of days available for each semester, and the worry towards workload for students.
Postponing finals would impact some employee’s salaries and violate their contracts. It became so complicated that the days couldn’t be pushed back.
Schools are required to have a certain number of days in each semester. If finals were pushed back, there wouldn’t be enough days for the second semester.
“We all knew that we were coming back to fewer review days, but we couldn’t figure out any other way to do it,” Martin said.
Moving finals would additionally have overloaded students. Putting more than two finals in a day was worrisome.
“We didn’t want you to walk in with math, science, and history finals all on the same day,” Martin said.

Having a few days’ breaks and then up to four finals in a day would leave students just as confused and brain-fried as unexpectedly early finals.
The school district tried to make the snow days as easy to get past as possible for students and teachers, and while it may not have been perfect, we all made it through finals week.
make the snow days as easy to get past as possible for students and teachers, and while it may not have been perfect, we all made it through finals week.