East Penn Schools Will be Open Nov. 28

Parents in are going to need to save a couple of slices of the Thanksgiving turkey for the lunch box since their kids will be heading to school on .

Nov. 28 officially became a make-up day in East Penn as a result of a vote at last night’s school board meeting.

Superintendent of Schools Thomas L. Seidenberger said that he and his team had spent the better part of the last three weeks . “The consensus is, ‘let’s make up the days before we move into the winter months,’” Seidenberger said.

Seidenberger told the board that the district had learned “through informal channels” that the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PA DOE) was not going to excuse East Penn from the second of two days of school missed during the first week of school due to flooded roadways.

Seidenberger also said that he was told that the district likely would have gotten relief from the PA DOE if East Penn had closed down specific schools following two back-to-back hurricanes rather than shutting down the entire district.

“It doesn’t sound fair,” Seidenberger said, “but that’s the information we got from the state department.”

School board President Charles Ballard asked Seidenberger which schools in East Penn would have needed to be closed because of the flooding. The superintendent said that , and were the schools most impacted at the time.

The move to open schools in East Penn on Thanksgiving Monday was approved by an 8-1 vote. School board member Julian Stolz voted against the decision.

East Penn was one of the only school districts open for business yesterday – Columbus Day. , but it became a regular school day so the district could make up the first of the two September “snow” days.