Tulsa Public Schools Proposes Snow Make Up Days

NewsOn6.com & Emory Bryan, News On 6

TULSA, Oklahoma -- Tulsa Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Keith Ballard visited with Six in the Morning early Monday to discuss how the school will make up its snow days.

In all, Tulsa Public School students have missed 11 days because of winter weather. 

The administration at Tulsa Public Schools is proposing a combination of longer school days and fewer holidays to make up for class time that was missed because of snow.

The proposal does not eliminate spring break or change the last day of school, which is now set for June 3, 2011.

Tulsa Public Schools plans to absorb the three existing snow days and hold classes on February 18, 2011, February 21, 2011 and April 8, 2011.

TPS would also add 30 minutes to the school day from February 28th until May 11th.  For elementary students, the day will likely end later, but it's possible that middle and high school students will start earlier.

"I think we can do it, we're just going to have to put our best effort into this," Kerry Fox, a fifth grade teacher, said. "With all this time off the kids are rested and I think we're ready to go at it."

Continuous learning schools would lose scheduled intercessions days of March 7-11th and March 21-25, and add April 8th as a class day. 

State testing has now been moved to the third week of April.

"Getting as much of that instructional time prior to state testing, to see how much we can make up before testing and another important part was to not extend the year any further into June than we have too," Larry Smith, Assistant Superintendent, said.

The proposed calendar changes will need approval by the Tulsa Board of Education.

The district took a survey and got 5,000 responses. TPS said there was almost a universal rejection of going to school on Saturdays and not much enthusiasm for eliminating spring break or delaying the end of school.