Four days before Hurricane Milton hit Florida’s Gulf Coast, when the storm threatened heavy wind and rain but still remained off the Yucatan Peninsula, school districts across the state began canceling classes.
Citing the need to prepare evacuation shelters and give families time to brace for what looked to become a major tropical cyclone, Tampa Bay districts announced they would close in advance and decide on the rest of the week once Milton’s path became more clear.
Students did not return for a week and a half. It was the longest period that weather had closed area schools since hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne blew through in 2004, maybe longer.
Studies looking into the effects of time lost to hurricanes suggest that many will have backslid, at least a little bit. So there’s been little opposition to making up the time.
With more storm closures still possible, and lessons from the pandemic still fresh, districts looked to an array of options: extending school days, giving up teacher workdays, even canceling fall and spring breaks. Each option came with pros and cons.
Deciding which path would most benefit students took some careful consideration.
50 hours lost
Between hurricanes Helene and Milton, many Tampa Bay students missed an average of about 50 hours of learning. That’s about 5% of the entire school year.
Districts generally consider students who miss 10% of their classes to be chronically absent and at risk of not meeting their grade level expectations.
Parents and teachers fully expected their calendars to change as a result. Across social media, they expressed hope that the district would not significantly further disrupt their lives with the decisions. In particular, they wanted to keep their holiday breaks intact.
At the same time, a competing concern arose that another option of adding a couple of minutes per day would have little real benefit for student learning.
The Florida Department of Education made one thing clear. It had no intention of waiving the requirement in law that students get a minimum of 900 hours, or 180 days, of instruction for the academic year.
Other than that, though, it said districts could account for the time however they saw fit.
Districts that missed fewer days, such as Palm Beach and Martin counties on the east coast, decided to take advantage of extra time already built into their schedules and not change their calendars at all.
Even some of the most impacted districts, including Pinellas County, could have followed that path. Despite the time away, they still would exceed the state’s 900 hour minimum — though just barely — as long as no other storms hit.
But educators said solely matching Florida’s base requirement would not provide enough time to meet and exceed standards. Across the nation, the state sits at the low end of those with class time mandates. Alabama, Louisiana and North Carolina, for example, require more than 1,000 hours a year.
Studies on the effects of time lost to hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Florence and Matthew indicated that missed days lead to regression in learning, in addition to not making advancements during that period.
“We need to make sure the students get the content,” said Pasco County School Board member Colleen Beaudoin, also a mathematics lecturer and former education department chairperson at the University of Tampa. “You can’t skip a chapter in math. Everything builds off it.”
So officials began delving into the details of the best way to accomplish that goal.
“The driving question was constantly around, how do we make all the right moves for all the right reasons?” Pinellas chief academic officer Donnika Jones said.
Minutes, hours or days?
Beyond the state rules, districts looked at individual course requirements, particularly for those that generate high school or college credit.
The Pasco district revised its calendar to accommodate for these credit concerns separately from the mandatory minutes. Superintendent Kurt Browning said he didn’t anticipate the district dealing with the latter until after hurricane season has passed, so it won’t have to rip up its plans if another storm comes.
Some schools within the same district differ, too, when it comes to things such as length of classes, passing periods and lunch times. As a result, the amount of instructional time missed could vary.
Such issues came into play for the Sarasota County district, which included as part of its plan an additional minute daily per course period for three of its high schools. Sarasota students missed 10 days of school because of the two hurricanes.
Its plan also eliminated all early release days and added three student days to the calendar.
“There is always educational value when there is continuity of instruction, be that in minutes or days,” Sarasota district spokesperson Kelsey Whealy said via email.
Increasingly, the preference is tending toward full days more than extended time per day.
“When you add 10 minutes to a day, it’s not really that much more effective,” said Megan Kuhfeld, a senior researcher for NWEA, an assessment company that helps schools monitor learning gains and losses. “Adding days … is generally more effective than minutes.”
Which days a district picks also matters, Kuhfeld noted. With families having already made plans for scheduled vacations, it’s tough to ask them to shift so their kids can come to school, particularly when they’ll be seeking a break from the stress that work and hurricane recovery entail.
The same is true for teachers and school staff, who plan their lives around regular school hours and set vacations far in advance to line up with the school calendar, said Rob Kriete, president of the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association.
“Everything they do is scheduled around that calendar, and then it’s kind of tossed up in the air,” he said. “A small change, it’s like a butterfly effect.”
A survey by the union showed that teachers preferred to turn early-release days, where students leave an hour early to give teachers planning time, into regular school days. That’s ultimately what the district did, along with some other major tweaks that kept seasonal breaks intact. But it still means that teachers will lose planning time, which Kriete said they’ll seek to make up later.
Use time wisely
Choosing teacher planning and other nonstudent days to make up the difference by itself does not necessarily get at the key issue of catching up in classes.
“How they’re going to use the time is just as important as the structure,” said Bree Dusseault, managing director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research organization at Arizona State University. “You can do whole days and have nothing happen with the whole day.”
Dusseault, who served as a school principal in post-Katrina New Orleans, said educators must channel their efforts on strategies they know advance students’ skills, focusing on individual needs as much as possible. Sometimes those needs will be social or emotional, she said, while other times they will be academic.
Schools also might find ways within their normal days to cut back on distractions and interruptions, effectively adding more time for learning without the need for more minutes, hours or days.
That thought came into play as Pinellas officials decided to waive first semester final exams as part of their makeup plan. It relieves stress, Superintendent Kevin Hendrick said, while also returning a full week of time for lessons rather than testing.
He expected as well to revive some of the interventions, such as added tutoring, the district used as students returned from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dusseault suggested that as weather systems become more unpredictable, the way Florida schools respond to the most recent hurricanes could offer insights on the most effective strategies to make up missed days, and how much seat time matters compared to content mastery.
“It is begging the question of how do you measure the school year,” she said. “Is it in minutes? Days? Or quality of time?”
Times staff writer Jack Evans contributed to this story.
• • •
5 things to know about the 2024 hurricane season, according to forecasters.
Forecasters predict ‘extremely active’ 2024 hurricane season. Here’s why.
Could Tampa Bay flood insurance rise after a hurricane? A warning from Hurricane Ian
Want to know what areas are flooding in Tampa Bay? Here’s where to look.
