Editorial: In hurricanes' wake, Florida schools make up for for lost learning

Terrible as they are, hurricanes are a part of living in Florida, and learning from every storm makes residents better prepared for next time. That’s certainly the case in the wake of hurricanes Helene and Milton, which sparked welcome guidance from the state Department of Education that affirmed the value of local school control.

Helene made landfall Sept. 26 in Florida’s Big Bend area, and less than two weeks later, Milton crashed ashore at Siesta Key in Sarasota County. Four days before Milton hit Florida’s Gulf Coast, school districts across the state began canceling classes. That’s a smart (if routine) drill that emergency planners designed to keep families together, cars off the road and the school buildings available as emergency shelters.

Yet the back-to-back storms kept students from returning for a week and a half. It was the longest period that weather had closed Tampa Bay area schools since at least hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne came through in 2004, as the Times’ Jeffrey S. Solochek reported.

The question now: How to recover lost instructional time? School closures during the COVID-19 pandemic sparked an academic slide that educators rightly want to avoid in our seasonal exposure to hurricanes. The debate is not whether students should make up lost time — but how. And the education department is helping by allowing Florida’s individual school districts to recoup the time as they see fit.

The state acted responsibly by making one thing clear: It would not waive the statutory requirement that students get a minimum of 900 hours, or 180 days, of instruction for the academic year. Florida’s class time mandate sits on the low end nationally, already; Alabama, Louisiana and North Carolina, for example, require more than 1,000 hours a year. Making up the time is critical to preventing a backslide and for making Florida schools competitive with other states.

Between hurricanes Helene and Milton, many Tampa Bay students missed an average of about 50 hours of learning, or about 5% of the entire school year. That’s about half the amount of instructional time that constitutes chronic absenteeism and a risk factor for students in meeting grade level expectations.

While parents and teachers accept that their calendars will change, educators and families are trying to strike a balance to make up time without unduly disrupting people’s calendars. Districts that missed fewer days, such as Palm Beach and Martin counties on the east coast, opted to keep their calendars intact and take advantage of extra time already built into their schedules. Pinellas chose to waive first semester final exams as part of its makeup plan, returning a full week of time for lessons rather than testing. Sarasota County eliminated all early release days, added three student days to the calendar and included an additional minute daily per course period for three of its high schools.

Adding a few minutes here and there doesn’t seem as valuable as scheduling additional days, when students are fresh and not focusing on the clock. But the experience from the pandemic showed that school districts are creative in finding ways to make the learning process work. Counties can learn from each other’s strategy about what works and what doesn’t, and build on these contingencies from one storm season to another.

What’s important now in the immediate school year is that the state is giving school districts the space to find solutions. Tallahassee has a bad record of preempting local control. The state’s latitude is a welcome change that should be more readily granted to local authorities.

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