The longer school day is occurring thanks to the winter storms that hit Oklahoma the first two weeks of February. The elementary students will be in school from their normal starting time of 9 a.m. to 3:45 p.m.

Choctaw High School and the two middle schools will not be affected, since enough instructional time was already built into the school calendar, McCharen said.

In addition, three snow days and an extra instructional day were part of the calendar. As a result, all students will attend school on those days in lieu of the scheduled holidays. Public schools in Oklahoma are required to offer 1,080 hours of instructional time.

“We’re better off than most (districts),” McCharen said. “Edmond is adding 40 minutes a day.”

Adding instructional days at the end of the school term is not a viable option, the superintendent said.

“When you start adding days at the end, student attendance is very poor. It also messes up dates and times for end-of-school activities, such as graduation,” he said.

The 15-minute add-on at the elementary schools will not affect teacher contracts.

“They have to be there until 4 p.m. anyway,” McCharen said.

The Choctaw superintendent complimented the district’s maintenance and transportation workers for their work during the seven days students were out.

“The maintenance guys worked most of those days and they continued to check on buildings while clearing sidewalks and parking lots. We had three frozen pipes, but overall the school building damage was minimal from the sub-zero temperatures,” McCharen said.

School bus mechanics made sure the buses were operational and ready when school resumed.

“They started the buses every day and we had only one bus that had a problem,” he said.

BUILT-IN SCHEDULING

Meanwhile, Mid-Del school officials have not changed their school calendar. Enough instructional time was scheduled to fulfill the state requirement, said district spokeswoman Stacey Boyer.

At the city level, the blizzards forced municipalities to spend thousands of dollars on employee overtime and equipment rental for snow plows and graders.

Midwest City spent $88,000 on overtime, supplies and contractual work because of the first blizzard, City Manager Guy Henson said. The second winter storm “was not as significant,” he said.

“Actually, we have a disaster relief fund, and even though it was a big event, it was not to the point where

we needed to go to that fund,” he said.

City officials reserve use of the relief fund for tornados or major ice storms “where we know we’ll have a significant expense to do certain things,” he said. “We use that fund knowing we will be reimbursed in the future.”

In Choctaw, public works employees worked 432 hours during the blizzards with 69 of those hours listed as overtime. In addition, the city spent $9,918 on renting two road graders and $3,056 on diesel fuel for the graders, City Manager Robert Floyd said. The actual overtime cost was not available.

Cities will submit their winter storm expenses to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for reimbursement.

“Even though we keep track of all the man-hours worked, we only get reimbursed for the overtime,” Floyd said. “We are usually reimbursed based on what the storm cost us.”

Damage to city vehicles was minimal, Floyd said. The rear bumper on one Choctaw police car was damaged when it became stuck in a snow drift and had to be towed.