In the 2022- 2023 school year, two major hurricanes have made landfall on Florida and affected
Hillsborough County. Hurricane Ian hit the west coast of Florida on September 27th and the 28th.
Hurricane Nicole, which downgraded to a tropical storm, swept across the state from the eastern side
on November 9th. Both hurricanes resulted in days off from school; the question is, do these days help
our students or harm their education?

“When first finding out that we had a week the rest of the week off from Ian after going to school just
Monday and Tuesday I was thrilled. But getting those three days off plus the weekend was just what I
needed, I caught up on a lot of work I did not do, and it gave me time to just relax and be stress free,”
Carson Linville, 11, said.

Getting away and doing some work on your own time and terms really helps you catch up in a healthy
way instead of cramming all the work at once. “Junior year has been extremely stressful and pressing on
everyone especially me, I have loaded my schedule with hard classes,” Linville said.

But with that all these days off, which has added up to four whole days, is harmful to not only our
education, but also the rest of the school year.

“At first, days off due seem nice to everyone that is sick of school, but honestly, it is hurting the
teachers and students. For our education teachers planning time is thrown off and requirements for
how much of the course is supposed to be completed so far. But also, it is harming our school year itself.
Due to Ian, we lost our early release days from now till semester two. Then the effect of Nicoles’ day off
we lost one day of our winter break. It just sucks that we lose early release and a day off because of
some storms,” Olivia Leary,12, said.