The Conference Committee on SF1743—the “Snow Days” Bill—reached an agreement Tuesday night, March 26, to allow districts to count days lost to weather as instructional-days, and requiring employees and contractors to be compensated under certain conditions.

The report was approved by the full House and Senate and is expected to be signed by the Governor as soon as today.

Some of the specific provisions include:

• For the 2018-19 school year only, a school board may count days that were canceled due to health and safety concerns as instructional days for purposes of calculating the number of hours and days required by law. There is no limit on the number of canceled days that may be counted.
• If a school district would not otherwise have met the required number of days and hours of instruction, the district must report to the commissioner the number of days and hours the district counted under the waiver to meet the required number of days. Districts are encouraged to adopt an e-learning day plan.
• If a school board resolves to count a day that was canceled as an instructional day, the district must compensate employees and contract employers as follows:
• Instructional employees who were scheduled to work on a day that school was canceled but did not work and did not receive any compensation for the canceled day must either be given the opportunity to work another day designated by the district or compensated at their normal rate of pay as though they had worked that day.
• A contract employer who provides student-related services who was scheduled to work on the canceled day and who agrees to compensate its eligible employees at their normal rate of pay for the hours lost due to the school cancellation must be compensated.
• A probationary teacher may count the canceled days toward the required 120 days of teacher service.

The conference committee report is available here: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?number=sf1743&type=ccr&session=ls91&version=0