Meriwether County education officials want to declare the school year over for 725 of the system's students after a tornado tore the roof and walls off their school last week and sent playground equipment flying.
Four other Georgia school systems are requesting waivers so their students and teachers don't have to make up the days they've missed since April 27, when tornadoes killed 15 people and caused $75 million in property damage across the state.
All five requests will go before the state Board of Education Friday at a meeting called to consider the weather-related hardships.
School districts have to seek waivers from the state board when they go beyond the four days built into their yearly calendars for weather emergencies.
Since the tornadoes, the Dade, Floyd, Spalding and Walker county school systems have had to cancel one or more days because of power outages, building damage and water quality concerns. And most of them had taken their four weather days when snow and ice storms hit in January, state school Superintendent John Barge said.
School officials in hardest-hit Catoosa County in far northwest Georgia won't be asking for waivers yet, Barge said. They are still sizing up their situation, dealing with insurance adjusters and restarting basic operations that were sidetracked by damage to the school system's central office, he said.
Students at Ringgold middle and high schools in Catoosa may end up being diverted to other schools well into next year, he said. One or both schools might have to be rebuilt, Barge said.
Meriwether officials asked the state board to declare the school year over for students at the county's Mountain View Elementary School. Parents said they'd rather see that happen than have the school's students split for the rest of the year between three schools and have their pre-k program relocated to a local church.
Because of a budget shortfall, the school year was set to end May 18 and the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests already had been given, Meriwether school Superintendent Carol L. Lane said.
"We are all coping with this situation and trying to run the school system," she said.
The Griffin-Spalding School System, south of Atlanta, is asking for a waiver to cover one day students missed after a tornado destroyed 90 homes, damaged 350 others and left some roads initially impassable. No schools were damaged, but the school system was asked by emergency personnel to shut down for a day because of safety concerns.
The school system already had canceled five days of school -- two because of budget problems and three because of the January storms -- and pushed back the last day of the year to May 26.
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