Austin High was given half days on the two Fridays of Austin City Limits. The school let students and teachers leave halfway through the school day so they could avoid traffic because of the school’s placement right across the lake from Zilker Park. However, another explanation for the half day is funding.

Schools lose funding when students are absent because of the attendance-based funding that AISD uses which gives schools funding based on Average Daily Attendance or ADA. When a large amount of students are absent, the school gets a portion of its funding taken away. Even though this may not seem like much money, it costs the school $45 dollars for each student who is absent per day. With over 2,000 students enrolled at AHS right now, even a fraction of those students being absent could cause major funding issues for the school.

The Fridays of ACL are notorious for being two of the most missed days because students want to get to the festival early. If the school lets out early, the students can walk from the school to the festival and only miss the very early performances. Not to mention that the parking lot spots cannot be sold while student and teacher cars are there so that would cause them to move their cars, thus opening the parking lot earlier for the school to sell them.

There is one drawback to having the half days. December 15, the first day of final exams, will be a full day. Students will spend the first part of the day working on our fifth period final exams. Students will spend the next part of the day participating in a “Career Day”. The last part of the day students will take their sixth period final exams.