Students receive an extra long winter break. Due to the snowfall and cold weather causes multiple snow days. Because of this, the district had to make a change in the schedule to meet the number of minutes the state requires students to be in school.
Principal Rick Rivera helped spread the information out to parents and students about the extra ten minutes added to the beginning of the day and made sure students showed up on time. The Department of Education in Kansas requires 1116 student contact minutes.
“As a district, we needed to add 10 minutes to our school day in order to meet the minimum requirement of that 1116 minutes,” Rivera said. “As a district, we decided that we would have the same start time for all of the schools.”
All of the schools in the district applied the same schedule to their school day to avoid disturbing the students’ daily routines.
“One of the things that we wanted to do was to make it so that it had the least disruption to the school day for our students and schedules,” Rivera said. “Part of that is that we’ve got several students who attend WSU tech or Butler academies, whether it’s in the morning or the afternoon, So we wanted to make sure that those class periods aligned with what they needed to be at,”
Initially, the students struggled to adapt to the new routine, so students recieved a grace period in terms of the tardy policy in the first week. Teachers are moving forward to hold people accountable for their tardiness.
“In that first week, coming back was a little bit of a learning curve, and people were just getting into a new routine,” Rivera said. “Since then, I feel like we’ve done a really good job at being on time.”
Freshman Alexis Blank has mixed feelings about the schedule change.
“It doesn’t inconvenience me,” Blank said. “I already get to school early, but I don’t really like it.”
Spanish teacher Frank Espinoza noticed some changes in his first block students’ behaviors after the schedule changed.
“In the mornings, they are more tired and struggle to do their work,” Espinoza said, “Some more than others.”
Espinoza is glad time was added at the beginning of the school day, so he doesn’t have to stay longer after school.
“I will be ready for us to go back to our normal bell schedule next year for sure,” Blank said.
Augusta is not alone in their schedule change.
“I think it’s important that students and parents know that the reason for the change is a result of us having the number of snow days that we had,” Rivera said. “Every district, or many districts around the state of Kansas have had to adjust their schedule to meet those minutes.”
