AISD forced to ‘make up minutes’

By Melinda L. Lucas

Albany ISD students and staff will make up a deficit in classroom minutes by eliminating three early release days at the end of the spring semester, according to an announcement by AISD superintendent Jonathan Scott on Monday.

Scott said that members of the District Improvement Committee met Friday, Feb. 24 and were presented with a couple of different options on how to make up “minutes” lost when last week’s winter storm caused classes to be cancelled on Wednesday and Thursday.

The state requires that students be in class a total of 75,600 minutes.

The district had “banked” enough minutes to cover four days lost earlier this school year, including a half day for football playoff travel on Dec. 9, a full day due to COVID cases on Jan. 14, and two and a half days because of bad weather Feb. 2-4.

However, the additional weather cancellations on Feb. 22-23 were enough to force school administrators to make some adjustments in the spring calendar.

“The six days we’ve missed created a deficit in the number of school minutes required by the state,” said Scott. “Without any changes to the calendar and without using any ‘bad weather days,’ we are short 480 minutes.”

The district’s 2021-2022 bad weather days are Good Friday and the Monday after Easter, April 15 and 18.

The first option reviewed by the committee required the use of April 18 as a make-up day (455 minutes), as well as extending one Friday to a 3:30 dismissal for another 30 minutes.

Option 2 adjusted three noon release days at the end of the semester (May 24-26) to full days, without using either of the bad weather days.

The DIC voted 9-4 in favor of Option 2, Scott said.

“At this time, if there are no more missed days, we will not need to use either one of the identified bad weather days on the 2021-2022 school calendar,” said the superintendent. “Details of adjustments to the semester finals schedule will be communicated in the upcoming weeks.”