The Oklahoma teacher walkout has come to a close, and now schools are feeling effects of missing class.
For some smaller school districts, like Geronimo Public Schools, the need to make up school hours has had a tangible impact on teachers and students.
Bill Pascoe, the principal of Geronimo High School, said the school has been making up the missed time by going to class on an unused snow day, adding three days to the end of the school year, and tacking on ten minutes to the start and end of every school day.
Other small school districts in Oklahoma, like Anadarko Public Schools, are taking the missed days in stride. They were able to adapt their schedule to not have to add school days or time to each day. For them, the largest issue they have been facing is being able to complete their standardized testing before school lets out for the summer.
Cindy Hackney, the superintendent of Anadarko Public Schools, said that part of their plan for ensuring that standardizing testing is completed in time is administering tests on days they normally would not, like Fridays.
For both Geronimo and Anadarko, graduation ceremonies for seniors are still on schedule. But for Geronimo, the seniors will still have to attend classes after their graduation ceremony to continue making up the missed days.
“They’ll be able to walk for graduation on Friday, but they will still have to show up to school on Monday and Tuesday of the next week,” said Pascoe. “But for the most part, they’ll have already fulfilled all their graduation requirements by that point.”