At This School, Every Second Counts : Education: Red Oak Elementary is now opening three minutes earlier to make up for a late start.

From the day Red Oak Elementary School opened its doors two weeks late, parents knew that their children would have to make up the eight days of classroom time that were lost while school officials scrambled to ready the new school.

Six of those days, they were told, would come from teacher training days. But, when it came to the remaining two days, the district got more creative.

Instead of starting the day at 8:30 a.m., they decided, school would begin at 8:27 a.m.

Parents were told that their children must report to school three minutes earlier than the other elementary schools in the Oak Park Unified School District.

Some parents Friday said they were surprised to learn that the district had decided on the early start time as a way to make up for the two lost days, and that an earlier plan to drop holidays from the school calendar had been scrapped.

“I had no idea,” said Eileen Segar, who was one of dozens of parents waiting to reclaim children Friday afternoon. “It’s not a problem, but I don’t think they’re going to get any more education with those three minutes.”

Said Tami Lawler, president of the Red Oak site council: “I thought 8:27 was a strange time for school to start.”

The three-minute solution was one of a number of options discussed with parent groups before the decision was made, school officials said.

“There is no conspiracy to hide what’s going on here,” said Red Oak Principal Jeff Hamlin.

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Even parents who didn’t know the reason were quick to defend the district’s decision.

‘I trust my district,” said Judi Barlow Fields, president of the Red Oak Parent-Faculty Assn. “We’ve experienced some difficult times and everyone is working hard to do the right thing.”

Said Oak Park Supt. Marilyn Lippiatt: “It hurts them deeply when something doesn’t come out in a positive light.”

Problems at the school began in late August, when the district realized that it would have to delay opening day because the contractor had not finished building the school.

At a meeting Aug. 31, where the decision was made to delay the opening of school, Lippiatt told parents that six of the eight makeup days would take place during teacher training days when the school normally is shut down.

On those training days, when teachers take part in the “school improvement program,” the district planned to hire 10 substitute teachers at a cost of $85 for each teacher. At that time, Lippiatt said the remaining two days would be made up by taking away holiday time from the students.

But school officials decided later to seek state approval to add a few minutes to each school day, Lippiatt said Friday.

The school figured out how many instructional minutes the state required of students for each school day--240 minutes for kindergartners, 290 minutes for first-, second- and third-grade students, and 310 minutes for fourth- and fifth-graders.

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Using a complicated formula, they came up with the figure of three minutes.

“There was no cover-up in how we did this,” Lippiatt said. “Why would we hide this? This was all done to accommodate the students.”

“I’ll be honest with you,” said parent Amy Lindauer, who was waiting for her three children Friday. “I didn’t know what those three minutes were for.”

Principal Hamlin said he planned to put out a special notice to parents “to apologize for not getting the information out to them sooner.”