Will North Texas school districts have to make up snow days? Here’s what to know
After closing for two days due to winter weather, most North Texas school districts are reopening on Wednesday, Jan. 28.
A winter storm brought snow, ice and subfreezing temperatures to the region over the previous weekend. Roads are expected to improve on Tuesday, Jan. 27, as temperatures climb above freezing and ice/snow begins to melt.
As schools reopen Wednesday, parents and students may be curious if they will have to make up missed class time due to the weather.
Here’s what to know.
How the Texas Education Agency counts class time
In 2015, Texas lawmakers passed House Bill 2610, which changed the way school districts count instructional time.
Previously, state law said districts had to provide at least 180 days of instructional learning during a school year. HB 2610 changed the requirement from days to minutes, with 75,600 minutes being the required goal for districts.
Thus, minutes is the name of the game, not days.
Will school districts have to make up lost time?
Some school districts build enough minutes into its calendar to cover bad weather days. Therefore, students are not needed to make up for the closures this week.
On the other hand, some districts still place bad weather days on the calendar and will utilize them to make up missed time.
We talked to some North Texas school districts about their plans and will update this story as we receive more responses. Here’s what a few local districts plan to do:
- Aledo ISD- “We ‘bank’ enough minutes into our calendar to cover these two days; we do not have bad weather makeup days in our calendar because of that. Therefore, our students should not be required to make up for our closure on Monday and Tuesday this week.”
- Birdville ISD- “Like most districts, we have days built into the required minutes on our instructional calendar so we will not need to use any alternate days to make up for these current weather closures.”
- Castleberry ISD- “As a result of closing Jan. 26 and 27, Castleberry ISD will be in session on Monday, Feb. 16, and Tuesday, Feb. 17.”
- Decatur ISD- “We have not decided on the official dates yet. We are waiting to see if the state will offer waivers to districts, but I’ll let you know if anything changes/as soon as I have those.”
- Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD- “We have enough minutes we will not need to make up these three days.”
- Everman ISD- “As of now, we have time in our schedule to cover the two days.”
- Grand Prairie ISD- “We have enough minutes built in to our school calendar that we do not anticipate having to make up these days.”
- Godley ISD- “For our school calendar, we have additional instructional minutes built in. So, we will not have to make up these three days.”
- Keller ISD- “The state calculates instructional time in minutes not days, and Keller ISD has additional minutes built into the instructional calendar so that neither of the missed days will have to be made up.”
- Northwest ISD- “Northwest ISD has enough instructional minutes built into the district’s calendar to absorb up to four inclement weather days.”
- White Settlement ISD- “We have banked minutes for our students so they will not have to make up the days on our inclement weather days that were scheduled.”
This story was originally published January 27, 2026 at 2:33 PM.
