By Jon Watje
Staff Writer

Can 17 minutes make a difference in the classroom? After the Mustang School District added 17 minutes to the school day because of days missed due to weather earlier in the year, administrators are utilizing that extra time to do what they feel is best for their students.

“We used the extra time in our reading and math courses since because those are areas that we really concentrate on,” Mustang Centennial Elementary Principal Neil Womack said. “We call these our power hours and we feel that other subjects stem off of reading and math, so this could help the students in other subjects as well.”

Mustang Middle School Principal Linda Wilkes said her school has added time to different classes.

“We added about two to three minutes of first, second, third, fifth and sixth hours,” Wilkes said. “It is not a huge amount of time, but it adds up because it counts up to 10 minutes a week for each class.”

At the high school, time was added to the beginning and end of the day instead of every hour like the middle school.

“We added five minutes to the beginning of the day and 12 minutes to the end,” Mustang High School Principal Angela Hunt said. “We will also be using the snow day on May 7.”

Mustang High School AP Chemistry teach Tom Garner had five minutes added to his class.

“I’ve noticed that instead of being cut-off by the bell, I have more time to answer students questions,” Garner said.

As far as the extra time being an annoyance to students or teachers in the district, administrators said they have not heard anything negative about the extra time in the classroom.

“I haven’t heard any complaints,” Womack said. “But at the elementary level, a lot of it is about adjusting to the new times and understanding that different schools have different needs.”

Womack said he wouldn’t mind seeing even more time permanently added to the school day.

“17 minutes is a quite amount of time to add to the day, but it is just not enough to try to add something else. If the district ever considered adding more time to the school day, I would be for it.”

Hunt said teachers feel the same way at the high school about the extra time.

“They love it,” she said.

Students have also taken the extra time well.

“Surprisingly, the students really haven’t said much about it,” Wilkes said. “I had a little one tell me the other day that the day goes by so fast that she really didn’t notice a difference. I think it would be great if we could add an extra 15 minutes to the day. With the way the economy is nowadays, many children are coming home from school without anyone there because their parents are still at work. We could use that extra time to help them with their homework or whatever else they need.”

The 17 minute policy was put into effect beginning Feb. 15 and will continue to the end of the school year on May 25.

Other options to make up the time missed from a severe winter storm included adding on three days to the end of the school year, adding 37 minutes to school days in the month of March or going to school on April 2 and May 7 while adding 11 minutes to each school day.