Extended Day

This is my twenty sixth year in public education and I have never had an extended school day to make up a missed day; mainly because in the past it was not allowed by the State Department of Education. If you missed a day, you had to make up a whole day. Other states, such as Tennessee have been adding minutes to the existing days to make up for missed days for several years.  I am not sure which is better since this is my first try on the extended day, but I do know that either way there are going to be people who are inconvenienced and people who prefer the other way.

Once we received the word we would be adding extra minutes, the task was to come up with a schedule at the local school that would be best for the majority of our students. Of course the most obvious and easiest option would be to add a different period at the end of our regular day. For example after seventh period on Monday, first period would meet and on Tuesday, second period would meet and continue the cycle until the end of the two weeks. There were several problems with this schedule mostly dealing with tech. school and early release/late arrival students.

We decided to add a few minutes to each period and to move our remediation period to the afternoon to adjust our schedule. Two main factors drive our schedule; lunch, and tech. school. The reason for this is because they are two of the factors that may not be changed without causing personnel issues or causing major disruptions. The Career Tech Center has students from every Limestone County School, and Athens City so if we start making major changes to our schedule, they will have some major issues with which to contend.

We look forward to having a strong finish to a great year.