Stigler students to see new faces, earlier start times

By Pennie Embry, Staff Writer

STIGLER, July 16 — It’s only the middle of summer, but the Stigler Board of Education was busy Monday night already planning the next school year. There are several changes coming to Stigler schools, including a new baseball coach, new grade school teachers and teaching assistants, and, most notably, earlier start times for all students.

“All schools will start 10 minutes earlier than they have in the past,” said Bill Self, superintendent of Stigler Public Schools. “In addition, we’re adding six minutes to the school day for the grade school.”

The time change was in part based on a new state law defining the school year as 1,080 hours of instruction, rather than only as 180 days of instruction. The new wording in the law reflects the need for schools to have greater leeway for building in extra instruction time to allow them to make up days lost due to inclement weather.

In the last nine years, the area has suffered three ice storms, causing Stigler students to lose many days of school. Despite built-in snow days, the grade school came up short on instruction time this spring, and “we had to bring our children back the Tuesday after Memorial Day,” said Self. “We had maybe a 50 percent absentee rate, but that extra day still cost us in terms of buses running and other things. With this extra time built in, we can keep something like that from happening.”

It takes six minutes a day to create three days of leeway in the school year, Self explained. The high school and middle school already had extra minutes built into their schedules, but until Monday night, the grade school did not.

“We’re not trying to shorten the school year,” said Self. “We fully intend to do 180 days of instruction, as always. But this does give our district some flexibility if we do have a week or more of school outage due to weather or some other catastrophe.”

Starting this August, Stigler Grade School will begin at 8:35 a.m. and end at 3:10 p.m. The middle school will run from 8:30 a.m. to 3:20 p.m., and the high school will run from 8:30 a.m. to 3:10 p.m.

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