At the start of the 2016-2017 academic school year, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools opted to add an additional seven instructional minutes to the school day in order to avoid having to make up snow days, an issue the district has run into in past years. After nearly two weeks of missed school and the loss of multiple days of spring break, it is clear this plan needs revision.
While on paper these seven extra minutes should result in more flexibility for snow days during the winter, the district does not seem interested in taking advantage of whatever help these minutes are offering.
The plan may have helped students avoid a dreadful Saturday class or two, but multiple days are still being taken from spring break.
As of now, the district has announced the loss of two days of break, a fact I find surprising after the district purposefully scheduled a winter break that was the shortest it has been in many years.
These seven extra minutes, along with proving to be useless in protecting students’ breaks, simply make no sense to the academic progress of our students.
With seven extra minutes being tacked on to only fourth period, teachers are unable to take advantage of this extra time, as it would put corresponding classes in any other period at a disadvantage.
Imagine a teacher has two AP Latin classes, one during first period and one during fourth. If his fourth period class is regularly receiving seven extra minutes of instruction compared to his first period class, mathematically speaking, the fourth period class would be significantly farther ahead come exam season. Because of this, teachers are not actually able to take advantage of the total 1260 extra minutes they have been giving during fourth period.
Now that winter is presumably behind us for good, we can likely look forward to the rest of the school year being uninterrupted by foul weather. However, it is clear the system implemented this year is not suitable to continue in the future.
