Despite having to call off class a number of days during January’s cold snap, Triton School officials will be able to hold steady on their final student day and commencement date.
Superintendent Jeremy Riffle said they’re able to do that thanks to a special distinction made by the Indiana Department of Education.
Riffle explained, “We actually were just given the designation of what they call ‘performance qualified.’ So we don’t actually have to make up a lot of the days that we canceled. So that actually allows us to hold firm on our June 5th date for our last day of school and still have our commencement on the 9th.
Riffle noted that the qualification is tied to the school corporation’s accountability grade. In 2017, Triton was given an A and then in 2018, they received a B.
He shared, “If you get an A and that’s followed by two Bs, you still have the opportunity to judge the school by the hours instead of the days. As soon as you get a C, you drop off of that performance standard.”
According to information provided to school officials by the IDOE, there is an existing Indiana Code (IC 20-30-2-2) that requires the instructional day for grades 1-6 consist of at least 5 hours of instructional time, and the instructional day for grades 7-12 consist of at least 6 hours of instructional time.
However, since Triton is eligible for the performance qualified school program, they may exercise some flexibility around these instructional time requirements.
Another Indiana Code (IC 20-24.2-4-2) states that a performance-qualified school corporation does not have to provide 180 student instructional days as long as the total number of instructional minutes provided in a school year meets the required timeframe.
The code goes on to indicate that students in the grades first through sixth are required to have 54,000 minutes of instructional time and those in seven through twelve grade, must receive 64,800 minutes instructional time before the years end.
