SALEM — Responding to massive weather-related school closures in the last two months, the Oregon Board of Education on Thursday will consider adopting a temporary rule that would waive 14 hours of state-mandated instructional time for this school year.

The Oregon Department of Education recommended the temporary rule after officials from several school districts contacted the agency to ask for assistance in meeting the requirement.

“Some school districts said: This is a really crazy year; this is unique. Is there something the department can do to help us out with flexibility?” said Emily Nasarov, an operations policy analyst with ODE. “When we started to get those requests, we looked at the given rules and state law to what could we do to afford relief to those schools and still protect instructional time as much as possible.”

The 14-hour waiver had been regularly available to schools to make up time for missed days due to inclement weather until 2015. That year, the Board of Education nixed the provision in order to protect instructional time, which is among the lowest amount required nationwide.

Toya Fick, executive director of Stand for Children, said she opposes rolling back any of the state’s mandated instructional time, given Oregon’s short school year.

“Kids missed a lot of school and add to that the fact that Oregon has one of the shortest school years in the nation, adults need to do everything thing they can to maintain the entire amount of instructional time as is,” Fick said.

Schools are required to provide at least 900 hours of instruction to elementary and middle school students each year and 990 hours to high school students, except seniors who need only 966.

The 14 hours would make a small dent in missed school time, so school districts would still need to come up with other ways to make up time.

After an initial onslaught of snow in December, Hermiston School Board added five school days to the end of its school year, moving graduation day from June 3 to June 10, said Tricia Mooney, the district’s assistant superintendent.

“We understand that changing the graduation date and extending the school year is challenging for everyone involved,” Hermiston schools Superintendent Fred Maiocco said Dec. 14. “However, we believe this decision is in the best interest of our entire community. We remain hopeful that with six months advance notification, everyone will be able respond flexibly to this difficult situation.”

Then more snow bombarded the area in January.

In total, the school district lost six school days, Mooney said.

“We were already making up five days and we had moved graduation,” Mooney said. “Unfortunately, the snow kept coming, and when you look across the state we aren’t even that bad.”

Without the temporary rule, the Hermiston School District still won’t be able to meet required instructional time, unless it adds another school day to the calendar.

“With the five days, we still have hours we need to make up, which is why we reached out to the Department (of Education),” Mooney said. “If they issue the temporary rule for 14 hours, we then are fine.”

That scenario assumes another winter storm won’t shut school doors again.

If the temporary rule is voted down, the local school board would have to consider using a day from Spring Break, a parent-teacher conference day or adding in 15 minutes to a number of days to make up time, Mooney said.

The Beaverton School District lost about nine school days during three separate ice and snow storms in December and January.

“I’ve been working in education for 18 years, and I can’t recall this extended of a period off,” said David Williams, administrator for government relations at Beaverton schools.

The school district’s calendar provides more instructional time than required by law, but not enough to make up for the missed time, Williams said. The district needed to make up about seven to meet state requirements.

School district officials extended the school year by one day to end June 22 and then used a combination of days for grading, parent-teacher conferences and teacher professional development and extending shortened finals days at the high school level, Williams said.

Beaverton officials were able to change the schedule without a vote by the teachers’ association because they used work days already in the teachers’ contract.

“It was a collaborative conversation with teachers,” Williams said.