(RALEIGH) -- A bill to help North Carolina school districts that have had to deal with disruptions from Mother Nature is headed to Gov. Beverly Perdue's desk.  Some districts in the western and eastern parts of the state would receive exceptions to minimum instructional time to compensate for days missed because of winter storms, tornadoes and a wildfire.

Rep. Jonathan Jordan, who represents the mountain counties of Ashe and Watauga said the bill would allow districts to hold classes for 180 days or 1,000 hours of instruction. "It gives us the flexibility up in the mountains where we've missed so many days because of snow that we can make it up more flexibly using the number of hours versus the number of days.  It's something we had last year.  Both of my counties have missed over 20 days due to the snow," said Jordan.

The standard state public school calendar requires 180 days of school.  This legislation would allow school districts to meet the 1,000 hours of instruction requirement even if this is done in less than 180 days.

The bill would apply only to school districts that missed more than 20 instructional days during the 2010-2011 school year. This includes six mountain counties and all of the counties in Eastern North Carolina declared a federal disaster area following the April 16 tornadoes.  Onslow County is also included because of days missed when a wildfire impacted the area in April.