By Caleigh Wells
Rockbridge County kids are waking up a little earlier and staying in school longer to make up for snow days, and parents and teachers are less than thrilled about it.
“My real question for the school board would be why in the world didn’t you build in some snow days?” said third grade parent Linda Hooks.
Unlike in previous years, Rockbridge County did not incorporate snow days into the school calendar. Lexington built in three this year, and last year Rockbridge County had five. Without any snow days built in, making up the 11 days the county missed became a concern.
The county school board approved a plan on March 24 to extend the school day instead of the school year. Starting last week, students begin their classes seven minutes earlier each day and are dismissed 21 minutes later. With the new plan, the school year will end on the original date of June 5.
Schools Superintendent Jack Donald said the board did not include snow days in the calendar because it tried to start school as close to Labor Day as possible and end as early as it could in June.
Once-in-10-year event
“Obviously we didn’t expect to have another school year with double-digit snow days,” Donald said. “Two years in a row where we miss over 10 days, that’s a once-in-10-year event for us.”
Donald said extending the calendar would have resulted in school ending on June 12. He said with SOL testing at the end of the year, keeping kids focused that late becomes a concern.
“I’m not sure how much true instruction takes place when you move beyond that first week [in June],” he said. “They’re ready to be out.”
Donald says the biggest concern administrators have heard from parents is the changes in bus transportation. Randy Walters is the county’s administrator for transportation and the principal of Maury River Middle School. He said organizing the bus rides home after school was difficult.
“The impact was felt more in the afternoon, and basically whatever you do to one school you have to do to all the schools,” he said.
Walters said only some of the schools needed to extend the school day, but because of busing, every school has to add the same amount of time. All of the buses run double routes, so they drop off all the elementary school kids before picking up the students from Maury River Middle School and Rockbridge County High School. The board wanted to keep the two age groups separate.
The wheels on the bus … roll at different times
“We still prefer to run separate bus routes [so] our kids don’t ride together,” Walters said, “and we felt like [mixing age groups] probably was not in our best interest even to gain the time on at the end of the day.”
Hooks’ child attends Central Elementary. She says the longer school day makes her schedule more difficult. Her son’s bus arrives almost a half hour later than before, and getting him to after-school activities is tighter.
“We are already getting up before sunrise, so seven minutes is actually a lot of time in the morning and we cannot back up any further,” said Hooks, a professor at Washington and Lee University. “My preference would have been to extend the calendar.”
The high school usually dismisses at 3:20 p.m., but now it lets out at 3:41 p.m., making each class period only four minutes longer.
Even though parents have to change their schedules, they were not included in the discussion.
Hooks said she first heard about the change from an announcement on a school Facebook page. She says parents and teachers were not aware of the possibility until the school board had already voted on the calendar change.
Some teachers are not happy, either.
“Now we will still get out by June 5th, but the cost is high — a longer school day by 28 minutes, a shortened spring break, and no Memorial Day holiday,” Rockbridge County High School teacher Susan Petriella said in an email.
Spring break for students lasted only two school days this year, and Petriella says students at the high school are looking tired. She says longer days are taking a toll on students’ learning.
“Certainly learning comes first, but to learn well, students and teachers need to feel rested and refreshed,” she said. “I am not sure our schedule between now and the end of the year offers much opportunity for those essential learning components.”
Parents and teachers like Petriella are hoping the plan for this year is only a temporary fix.
“We have made the best of our situation, but I do hope this type of situation can be avoided in the future with better planning,” she said.