School districts may have to add extra days.
School districts across greater Houston are working to determine if they need to add extra days to their academic calendars or extra minutes to their school days to make up two days missed this week due to icy weather.
Area students already have missed two weeks or more of classes during the current school year as a result of Hurricane Harvey and the flooding it triggered.
Some of the area’s largest districts — including Houston and CypressFairbanks — have already announced they likely will need to add at least one day to the school year after canceling classes Tuesday and Wednesday. The Cy-Fair and Humble school districts said students will no longer have a day off on Monday, Feb. 19, which will instead be used as a makeup day. That date had already been set aside as a makeup day in the event of unexpected school closures.
Houston ISD Superintendent Richard Carranza said Wednesday that his district, Texas’ largest, likely will need to add two instructional days to its academic year.
“We’re going to try to avoid adding days onto the end of the year. It wreaks havoc on graduation schedules, and lots of students and families have announced dates and have people flying in,” Carranza said. “We’ll do everything in our power to avoid tacking onto the end of the school year.”
Representatives of the Katy, Klein and Sheldon school districts said officials will calculate whether they need to add more days to the academic calendar or minutes to school days once staffers are back in district offices Thursday,
They said they will alert families through
emails and phone calls and notify local media once a decision is made.
The Texas Education Agency granted at least 49 traditional public school districts and charter school networks in the Houston area waivers for up to 10 days missed as a result of Harvey, according to correspondence between the state agency and Texas school districts.
Some districts were granted waivers for more days on a case-by-case basis, according to the TEA.
Sheldon ISD schools missed about three and a half weeks after Harvey, which slammed into the Houston area as a tropical storm but brought heavy rains and historic flooding. Some districts, including Conroe ISD, only missed six days due to the storm. Incremental time
Texas school districts can also increase the length of their school days to help absorb days missed due to unforeseen circumstances, thanks to a 2015 law that mandates the TEA measure the school year through instructional minutes instead of through instructional days. Rather than requiring schools complete 180 days of classes, the state now requires schools to provide at least 75,600 minutes of instruction.
Houston ISD, for example, added minutes to the instructional days at 11 schools during the fall semester after those campuses remained closed when the majority of other HISD schools resumed classes after Harvey.
After closing for two days this week, Humble ISD spokeswoman Jamie Mount said, the district will reduce the number of late-arrival and early-release days for elementary, middle and high schools later this semester and will announce specific changes next week. Alvin, Spring OK
Alvin and Spring ISD officials said the TEA waivers, coupled with extra time built into their school days, mean students will not have to make up the two days missed this week because of the icy weather that blew across the region Tuesday.
“Please note that should additional school days be missed, a process for makeup time would be necessary,” wrote Daniel Combs, Alvin ISD’s spokesman.
Spring ISD also changed Monday, April 9, from a teachers-only day to a regular school day after Harvey to allow for a one-day cushion in case there were more unexpected school cancellations.
But even with the TEA waivers and scheduling flexibility, Carranza said Hurricane Harvey ate into a significant chunk of inclement weather days built into HISD’s school year. He said that if the district has to cancel another school day due to weather or other circumstances, students will have to make that up later this year as well.
Said Carranza: “We’re praying for really good weather until the end of the school year.”