This article explains how to calculate academic calendar minutes per day, lunch minutes, and instructional minutes for an Oklahoma public school. Once these values are calculated, you’ll need to enter them on the academic calendar so that they can be reported to the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) via the Wave. To learn more about how to enter minute values on your academic calendars, click here.
To calculate Minutes Per Day and Instructional Minutes, you first need to know your school start time and end time as well as the number of regular days and half days of school. Click the links below to learn about how to check these settings in SchoolInsight and make corrections if necessary. It’s important to make sure that your start and end time settings and calendar date settings are correct in SchoolInsight because these values are sent to the Wave and will be used to validate your calculations.
- Verify School Start Time and End Time
- Verify Student Days in Attendance
- Calculate Minutes Per Day, Lunch Minutes, and Instructional Minutes
Verify School Start Time and End Time
It’s important to make sure that start and end time settings are correct because SchoolInsight sends your daily minutes to the Wave based on these settings.
To view or change regular and half day school start and end times:
- Go to School Admin Main > Attendance > Options
- Scroll to the bottom of the page
- View Default School Time
- Regular Day
- Half Day
- Edit if needed
Verify Student Days in Attendance
Student days in attendance is a count of the number of days that students attend school. Even if you know the number of attendance days at your school, you should view the SchoolInsight calendar to make sure that the SchoolInsight calendar is correct. Make corrections and updates when necessary.
To view your calendar(s):
- Go to (School District) Admin Main > Academic Calendar
- Find the calendar that you are working on
- Click view
- Calculate Half Days
- Half Days = Total number of days marked as HD across all months
- Calculate Regular Days
- Scroll to the bottom of the calendar page to view Total number of school days
Regular Days = Total number of school days minus number of half days calculated above
Calculate Minutes Per Day, Lunch Minutes, Instructional Minutes
Once you know your start and end time and days of attendance, you’re ready to determine your minute values. Below is an explanation of minutes per day, lunch minutes, and instructional minutes and how to arrive at the correct values for your school.
|
Minutes Per Day |
The time between student start time and end time on a regular school day. This value includes lunch and passing periods. For example, if school starts at 8:00am and ends at 3:15pm, you have 435 minutes per day in your regular school day. |
|
Half Day Minutes Per Day |
The time between student start time and end time on a half day. This is used for the Instructional Minutes calculation, but is not entered directly into the calendar. |
|
Lunch Minutes |
The number of minutes that students who are assigned to this calendar are scheduled to be at lunch each day. If the lunch time varies among students, you must have multiple calendars with different lunch minutes in order to accurately report minutes for all students. |
|
Instructional Minutes |
The number of minutes that students are scheduled to be in instructional time for the year. This value includes passing periods, but does not include lunch. To calculate instructional minutes, add up the instructional minutes per day for full days and half days. You may also include up to 2 parent-teacher conference days. As an example, if you have 180 student days of attendance and students come to your school for 435 minutes per day with a 35 minute lunch every day, your Instructional Minutes value would be 72,000 (400 x 180 = 72000). Click here for a more detailed example of how to calculate instructional minutes when you have more complicated situations such as half days and parent-teacher conferences that are scheduled in place of a regular school day. |
Total Yearly Instructional Minutes
Total yearly instructional minutes is the sum of all minutes of attendance for the year minus lunch minutes. This includes regular days, half days and up to one 6-hour parent-teacher conference day per semester.
To calculate total yearly instructional minutes with half days and parent-teacher conference days:
Parent-Teacher Conference Days
Up to one 6-hour parent-teacher day per semester can be included in instructional minutes. If you have parent-teacher conference days scheduled during a regular school day, add up to 360 minutes per parent-teacher conference day to your instructional minutes. Read more here about how to review your calendar(s) to make sure that parent-teacher conference days are entered correctly.
1 OSDE allows a maximum of two 360 minutes of instructional time to be claimed for parent/teacher conference days. Therefore, in this example calculation, 360 minutes replaces the school’s actual minutes per day and no lunch minutes are subtracted.