Fort Worth ISD Headquarters
Fort Worth ISD is extending the amount of time that students will spend in its classrooms next year.
The district announced earlier this week that it will extend the length of the school day by 10 to 15 minutes at all of its schools starting in August. It also unveiled new start and end times for the 2018-2019 school year.
At the district’s 13 “traditional” high schools, students will start the day at 8:25 a.m. and end at 3:40 p.m. Middle schools will start at 9:15 a.m. and end at 4:30 p.m. Elementary students will be in the schoolhouse from 7:50 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The revisions were sparked by a 2015 law passed by the Texas Legislature that changed the way schools account for instructional time. Prior to 2015, the school year lasted 180 days. Now it’s counted in minutes, 75,600 of them, to be exact.
By changing to the new system, the school will be able to eliminate the two days it had set aside each year in case of cancellations due to bad weather.
The district says that teachers will work the same amount of hours as they did under the old system.