The Pawtucket elementary school day was five minutes short of the state requirement. It is not known for how long.

The figure was discovered in April, when a state official, reviewing an unrelated request to waive a snow day, asked the district to confirm the length of its own school day. An assistant superintendent checked and answered accurately, which is how the matter came to light.

Subtracting lunch and recess, the day ran five hours and twenty-five minutes. The requirement is five hours and thirty.

The state then reviewed the full calendar and identified additional shortfalls arising from snow days and delayed openings. The total came to approximately twenty-six hours, or nearly five school days, across ten elementary schools.

The district's corrective plan added ten minutes to each remaining day beginning May 26, held class on June 22 and 23, and shortened lunch by five minutes on June 24.

Roughly four hundred teachers had to be paid for the additional days. Transportation had to be re-scheduled around them. The mayor put the figure near $700,000 to $800,000, having earlier put it near $255,000. The School Committee chair said it could exceed one million dollars. The superintendent said the total was still being reconciled.

The district is already carrying a deficit and has issued layoff notices to forty-six teachers.

The recovered hours were delivered in the last week of June, in increments of ten minutes, appended to the end of days that had already ended, in rooms that had already been packed up. Twenty-six hours were returned to the ledger. The ledger is where they were missing from.

Asked who was responsible, the mayor said one superintendent filed the paperwork and the next followed it. The superintendent said he was taking full responsibility for rectifying the mistake. No inquiry has been announced.

The five minutes have been restored. The district is paying for them at a rate substantially higher than it paid for them the first time.