March 28, 2024

School board approves plan to make up canceled days

To address the large amount of school days missed by the district already this year, PCM Superintendent Brad Jermeland presented a two-part plan for the remainder of the year. The school board approved the plan, adding both minutes to each day and additional days to the schedule, at its regular monthly meeting Monday.

“The hourly calendar provides the flexibility of adding instructional time onto the school day to make up time,” Jermeland said. “I met with the building principals and we talked about all sorts of options such as utilizing some of our late start time, but we really felt that the work that we’ve done with the late starts has been very productive and we’d like to keep that for its intended use.”

To make up the 10 days missed due to snow, ice, sub-zero temperatures and athletic events, starting March 4, the district will lengthen the school day by 20 minutes, adding five minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon. For the late starts on Mondays, students will report at 9:30 a.m. and be released at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, classes will begin at 8 a.m. and conclude at 3:30 p.m.

“We’re putting most of that time on the back side so we don’t have students waiting outside possibility earlier in the morning for buses,” Jermeland said.

The remainder of the time will be made up by extending the school year after the original end date of May 24 to May 31. By having classes May 28 through 31, following Memorial Day, four more days will be added to make up the weather cancellations. The addition of the minutes each day and the four days will capture 43 total hours of instructional time through the end of the year.

Any additional instructional time missed throughout the remainder of the year will be made up as full days at the end of the school year.

“I like the plan and I like keeping the late starts on Mondays,” board member Rod DeHaai said.

Jermeland said, although the district is only required to have 1,080 hours of instructional time, he thought it was important to maintain similar hours to what was originally approved for the school year.

“I think we need to be careful, we approved 1,127 hours on our original calendar … I think we need to try to capture back as much time as we can,” Jermeland said. “I think that is best practice and the practice the department of education would recommend.”

He said they will also be looking at the four-year-old pre-school program and how to capture the hours that were missed, especially for the morning section, at the end of the year.

“This is what the administration feels would be the best process to make up the days,” Jermeland said.

Contact Jamee A. Pierson at 641-792-3121 ext. 6534 or jpierson@newtondailynews.com