The Conroe ISD board of trustees held a discussion regarding making up days for bad weather events and possibly adding more teacher workdays for staff on the school calendar at the Oct. 20 school board meeting.
The gist
Mark Murrel, assistant superintendent for high schools, broke down the internal conversation CISD is having over its inclement weather days. This stems from a decision CISD made to close the school due to dangerous weather on Sept. 1 and extend the school day hours starting on Oct. 13 to make up for the lost day.
The CISD calendar has an inclement weather day scheduled on March 29, but it is currently being treated as a holiday for many CISD locals. The current calendar was not designed with spare minutes to absorb the missing school day.
According to the Texas Education Agency website, under House Bill 2610 school districts and open-enrollment charter schools must provide a minimum of 75,600 minutes of instruction per school year, including intermissions and recess.
With such a large part of the school year remaining and spring being a time with historically bad weather, CISD is trying to decide how to handle those days for the rest of the semester if one occurs.
Murrel said that CISD must make a change to the schedule in some form, whether it be adding another inclement weather day or approving additional minutes to the remaining school days.
The specifics
If CISD were to use the March 29 inclement weather day, Murrell said that it would have a wide range of effects. The March 29 day would originally be a planned 4-day weekend around Easter, and the removal of that day would affect family, staff trips and district morale.
“We got their opinion and what we got was a very substantial nod to add minutes to the day, and we want their voice to be counted,” Murrell said.
The district conducted a survey for all district employees on the decision to add more minutes to the schedule or use the current March 29 day instead. Murrell said they received 3,917 responses for the survey. The top 3 responses from the survey showed that 43.4% of respondents support CISD adding 5 minutes per day for the remainder of the school year to make up for the missing day. 25.3% supported only adding 2-3 minutes to the school day, and 15.6% supported utilizing the March 29 date.
Board member Melissa Dungan supported a motion to not add more minutes to the schedule and instead utilize the designated March 29 date to make up for lost time. However, the CISD board of trustees voted 6-1 against the motion.
One more thing
The district has released its initial plans to create the calendar for the 2027-28 school semester. The board will vote to approve the calendar on Jan. 19 at the latest.
