After missing a lot of days because of bad weather, one local school district is going to change its schedule to make up the lost classroom time. Starting next month, Rockridge will add half-an-hour to the school day through the end of the school year.
Superintendent Perry Miller says instead of being open from 8 to 3 each day, their schools will stay open until 3:30 in the afternoon.
"Right now it's not a whole lot of changes to our bus pickups in the morning - might be a 5 or 10 minute change, but not a whole lot to do there. We've got to make sure we work through some other things with our schedules for support staff and that kind of thing."
Miller says Rockridge students have missed 12 days of school this winter, but their calendar has five emergency days built in, so students only have to make up 7 days between now and graduation.
"In the three years I've been here, we've used one - this year we had to call 12, so far. And we're not out of the woods probably."
Some of the missed school days will be made up for using time that had been set aside for staff training.
Miller says the district could have asked for a waiver from the state because of the extreme winter weather, or extended the school year, but decided neither was in the best interest of Rockridge students.
