As if dealing with the aftermath of two major hurricanes wasn’t enough, the administration of Hillsborough County schools has decided that the solution to making for loss school time is to extend school day by five minutes in the second semester. This isn’t necessarily a horrible idea, but I feel there could be a better alternative. This idea will not only serve to frustrate students but also inconvenience them as well.
For starters, five extra minutes at the end of the day is not going to make a meaningful difference in the amount of instructional time we have lost. Hurricanes Milton and Helene forced us to miss several full school days, and tacking on a mere five minutes each afternoon is not going to come close to making that up. If the goal is to recover lost learning time, the school should be looking at adding additional school days, not just a few extra minutes.
Speaking of that lost time, why can’t we just cut into spring break instead? I think most students would rather give up a day or two from the Christmas and/or spring break then have to stay at school an extra five minutes every single day.
Personally. the five minutes extension is going to create major inconvenience for me. I have soccer practice 45 minutes away from the school, and with afternoon traffic, those extra five minutes are going to make it extremely difficult for me to get there on time. I’m sure many of my classmates who participate in after school activities or even have jobs will face similar challenges.
At the end of the day, this decision feels like the administration taking the easy way out rather than coming up with a thoughtful, student-centered solution to the problem of loss instructional time. Tacking five minutes is lazy, inconvenient and won’t actually make up for what we’ve missed. The school needs to get back to the drawing board and find a better way to help us recover from these hurricanes.