Conroe ISD students at The Woodlands High School will start class at 7:12 a.m. instead of 7:15 a.m. beginning Oct. 13, with dismissal pushed from 2:35 p.m. to 2:37 p.m.

The five extra minutes per day are the district's answer to a Sept. 2 closure forced by Tropical Storm Edouard. Campuses across Conroe ISD will follow a similar pattern through the end of the 2026-27 school year, The Caledonian, the TWHS student newspaper, first reported.

Elementary, intermediate and junior high campuses will start five minutes earlier than their current bell times. The district is also tacking five minutes onto each of the six high school half days and 40 minutes onto each of the two elementary, intermediate and junior high half days.

Bus pickup times and campus arrival times will not change, according to information the district shared with families.

Why not use the makeup day?

The Conroe ISD 2026-27 calendar includes a built-in inclement weather makeup day on March 29. Instead of scheduling classes that day, the district surveyed its roughly 12,000 employees. Of the 3,917 who responded, 68.7% preferred adding daily minutes over using the March 29 date.

Within that group, 43.4% chose the option the district adopted: add five minutes each day and keep March 29 open as a backup if another storm forces a closure. The district did not survey parents or students, according to The Caledonian's reporting.

In a Sept. 30 statement to parents, the district said the schedule adjustment gives it more flexibility to respond to weather while protecting instructional time. Texas law requires districts to provide 75,600 operational minutes per school year, as the Houston Chronicle reported.

What it means for TWHS families

The two-minute later dismissal affects students with tight after-school schedules.

"I have to be at work at 3 p.m. after school, and I can barely make it there with a few minutes to spare with the current schedule," TWHS senior Madelynn Adams told The Caledonian. "The new schedule will make me a few minutes late everyday."

The adjusted bell times take effect Tuesday, Oct. 13, and remain in place for the rest of the school year.