"The real value to students in this bill is that right now the law is written so that if schools have weather-related late starts or early dismissals, they don't have to make up the day at all even if the early dismissal was at 9 o'clock in the morning and kids were only there for 30 minutes. Under the proposed floor, they would have to make up all of the instructional hours missed, whether it was weather-related or not, and so kids will really get the amount of instructional hours that they should be getting," she said.

The new approach will stop what Greta called "all of those crazy calculations" but she conceded the change may not be popular with school kids.

"Kids may not like this bill," she said. "We fully recognize that, but you know what, five to 10 years from now they can look back and say, yeah, I got all the education that was due to me."

Legislative reaction was somewhat mixed Thursday, with several key education committee members taking a wait-and-see posture until they had a chance to read the department's proposed legislative change.