Longer day required as audit reveals required instructional hours minimum not met
Longer day required as audit reveals required instructional hours minimum not met
Anzar High School recently had to extend the length of its school day after an annual audit revealed the San Juan Bautista school has been offering fewer than the state-required instructional minutes for the past seven years.
The district notified all parents and students of the schedule change – which went into effect Monday – through an automated phone call, a letter sent home with each student and an explanation in Anzar’s “Hawk Squawk” newsletter.
The change means the school day now begins at 8 a.m. instead of 8:15 or 8:25 a.m., with ending times varying from 2:10 p.m. on Wednesdays to 2:40 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays and 3:15 p.m. Mondays – or up to 20 minutes later than before.
In a March 8 email to Anzar Principal Charlene McKowen, District Superintendent Willard McCabe said the district discovered that it has been violating state education code, which mandates that schools offer a minimum of 64,800 minutes of instruction per year – or an average of 360 minutes per day for grades nine through 12.
“A rough estimate of the shortfall results in an annual instructional minute calculation of approximately 55,000 minutes, which is well below the minimum required.” McCabe wrote.
“Whereas the District is now aware of this situation, we need to immediately rectify the deficiency in minutes,” which totals nearly 917 hours.
The superintendent said the genesis of the violation stems from the district counting the minutes of a single advanced biology class offered during zero period, when they should not have been because the class “is not available to enough of the student body who would qualify for the class and would want to participate in it.”
The miscalculation has been made “for at least the past seven years,” McCabe said.
Without counting its lone zero period class – an optional offering held before the traditional start of the school day – toward its overall instructional minute count, the school was out of compliance with state rules. The district met with its auditors to determine the scope of the deficiency and figure out how to make up the required minutes to comply with the instructional calendar.
“Typically districts in this situation are required to adjust their schedules and then make up minutes over the following two years,” McCabe said, adding that the district was working with auditors to figure out what is a shortfall of approximately one month of instruction.
“Fortunately, the state only requires a District to make up the past year’s shortfall as opposed to a shortfall over time,” he said.
Once it gets final details from its auditors, the district will create what McCabe called “a rehabilitation plan that makes up the shortage of minutes over a two-year period.”
A March 19 letter to parents and students from McKowen acknowledged that the mid-year schedule change “might be a tremendous inconvenience at such short notice for many of you” and that the school and district “deeply regret this.”
“Teachers are also struggling to find a way to adjust their own families’ schedules,” she wrote. “We will need to work together to make the best of an inconvenience.”
After reviewing the records of all of its schools, the district also learned that there was “a disproportionate amount of instructional time” between the two kindergarten sections at Aromas School, totaling 62 minutes. Staff at that school came up with a plan to bridge that gap this year and adjustments will be made to next year’s schedule to avoid compliance concerns.
In her “Principal’s Corner” segment of the Anzar newsletter explaining the school’s schedule change, McKowen offered a lengthy explanation of the need for the immediate schedule change.
She said that the school annually offers its auditors with the amount of instructional minutes it provides and has been “perfectly transparent about our counted minutes,” dating back 15 years.
“Each year the auditors have approved our minutes, counting zero period classes,” which in recent years have been reduced from four sections to one due to budget cuts.
To accommodate the need for additional instructional hours, the school has replaced its zero period with a “rotation period” before the traditional first period of the day. This time can be used for activities such as test prep, tutorials and study hall.
“Plopped down in the middle of the school year,” McKowen wrote, “the change of schedule has possibly inconvenienced every Anzar family, student, teacher, and staff member in tangible ways. I recognize this and again express my sincerest apologies for this.”
The school and the district, she said, are “keen on doing the ‘right thing’ and the required number of instructional minutes is not a negotiable issue with the state.”
Officials will assess the new schedule after it has been in effect for a couple of weeks, McKowen said, including whether buses are getting students to school on time and whether students are “realistically” able to focus from 8 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. on Mondays.
Some benefits from the new schedule, she said, include expanded test prep or senior exhibition opportunities during the rotation period.
