North Tama Announces Make-Up Days: Final Day of School Will Be May 31

Superintendent News & Views

North Tama Announces Makeup Days: Final Day of School Will Be May 31

By David Hill, North Tama Superintendent

This has been an unprecedented year of extreme weather, with twelve canceled days of school and a total of 93.65 hours of school missed as of my submission of this column to the newspapers on February 27. 

Most adults that grew up in Iowa can probably remember one or two especially bad years from when they were kids.  I don’t recall the year, but I do remember attending school on a Saturday when I was in elementary school in order to make up missed days.  I also recall missing thirteen days of school due to weather during my early years as a principal.  But all of those memories were under the “old” system when instructional days were counted differently. 

A few years back, Governor Branstad signed a new law that allowed schools to count instructional HOURS (instead of days) with a minimum of 1080 hours required for students in first grade through eleventh grade.  Ever since that time, North Tama’s calendars have included approximately 1200 hours of instruction, allowing for about 120 hours of “cushion” to account for hours missed due to late starts, early dismissals, and for other reasons. 

We understand that people want to know when the last day of school will be.  Families have travel plans, students have summer jobs and summer activities, and even teachers and staff need to be able to make plans for the conclusion of the year.  Because this has been such an extreme year, the date of the last day of school has been a moving target – a lingering uncertainty.  At a special meeting of the North Tama School Board held the morning of February 27, the board approved a plan to remove that uncertainty. 

The last day of school for the 2018-2019 school year will be Friday, June 7.  As is customary, we will end the year with an early dismissal on the last day of school.  The elementary will dismiss at 1:25 p.m. that day while the secondary students will be dismissed at 1:30 p.m.

School will now be in session on May 3 (which was designated as a built-in make-up day), March 11, April 8, and May 13 (which were originally scheduled to be teacher professional development days), and on May 28-31.

Seniors will attend school on the announced make-up days prior to their graduation, but the last day of school for the seniors will not change.

The adjusted calendar will restore a cushion of additional hours above the state-required minimum that will enable the district to conclude the school year without going into the second full week of June. In other words, if we have another snow day between now and then, we will NOT plan to make it up unless the cushion is completely exhausted again.

You should note that under this plan, we will not be making up every day that has been missed to this point. As explained above, additional days that may be canceled after this writing will also not be made up unless the cushion of hours is completely exhausted.  Teachers will report to work June 3, 4 and 5 (or an agreement may be reached for an alternate work schedule for the teachers) and may work additional hours on any upcoming canceled days if additional cancellations occur. Our adjusted calendar will meet the instructional hours required by law and the number of work days in the teacher contract.

As always, I encourage your feedback on this column, along with any questions you may have. You are welcome to visit my blog at http://redhawksupt.blogspot.com/ where you can read all of my columns and leave comments if you wish. You are also welcome to follow me on Twitter, where my handle is @DavidRobertHill.