The weather we've had in Buffalo and Western New York has been pretty rough this week. Not only have the extreme cold temperatures wreaked havoc all around the nation, but the Empire State has caused a state of emergency and shut down several regions of the state for a couple of days. The impact of those shutdowns is still being felt days later as we are starting to thaw out from the extreme cold.

Earlier this week, the Buffalo Public School system, along with other schools in New York State, canceled classes and kept kids home in an effort to keep children and staff safe from the below-zero wind chills that we were hit with. Those closures this week also happened to coincide with the statewide Regents Exams that were scheduled.

The exams that were missed were pushed to later this week, but there isn't enough time left to get all of the exams in, so school districts like Buffalo are making an adjustment to the school schedule for next week to accommodate things.

The original Regents Examination schedule had tests set to go from Tuesday, January 21, 2025, to Friday, January 24, 2025. Since schools were closed on Tuesday and Wednesday for many schools around the state, those exams, which include English Language Arts, Geometry, U.S. History & Government, Earth Science, Chemistry, Algebra, and Physics, needed new dates.

All of the exams were able to be rescheduled for Thursday and Friday, but that doesn't leave a whole lot of time for districts like Buffalo to grade and score the tests.

So, to make it work for everyone, high schools in Buffalo are going to remote learning on Monday, January 27, 2025. This will give district staff the time to score tests and get the results transmitted to Albany in a relatively timely manner.

So far this change only applies to high schools, students in elementry and middle schools are set to be in person as normal.

Some Surprises On the List of the 12 Biggest School Districts in Upstate New York!

Most people in Upstate New York graduated from very small school districts. I know I did, 308 students. But what about those in the larger cities?

Here is a list of the dozen largest school districts in Upstate New York. For those of us from small rural schools, it is mind-boggling to imagine graduating from a school with 10,000, 20,000 and even 40,000 students in the district like some of those on this list did.

Amazing!

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