I just read a thought provoking article by Elena Silva for The Quick & the Ed titled The Value of a School Day. With all the budget issues, school districts are cutting costs where ever they can. One cut that Silva disagrees with is shortening the school year, but many districts are going to that. This year, my students came for 177 days. I think that we did add 5 or 10 minutes to each day to make up for it though. She provides a list of money saving alternatives to consider before getting rid of school days as she feels that greatly hinders student learning. One of the suggestions was to freeze salary step increases for all employees for one year. My county did this, but not just for one year. No one (teachers anyway) has gotten a raise in 4 years. In fact, because of furlough days, I now make less money than I did when I first started teaching. I'm really nervous that I won't be paid for this master's degree I'm currently working on.
Silva did point out that reducing the days of the school year negatively effects poor children the most. I hadn't really thought of that before, but it is true due to lack of child care and lack of summer learning opportunities. What do y'all think of the 4-day school week? I'm sure it'd be extremely hard on parents and maybe not beneficial to students? Are y'all still getting your salary steps? What do your districts do to save money?
http://www.quickanded.com/2012/06/the-value-of-a-school-day.html
I am not sure if I feel like there should be shorter school years. I think it is hard enough for kids to retain the information over the summer. Making it longer would just add to it. I like the idea of year long school. I am not sure how that would aid in the budget, but I know I would not mind a break every nine weeks. Maybe a 3 week break in the summer and in the winter will aid in the heating and cooling costs. I think a 4 day school week would be great, but like you mentioned, how would that affect working parents? Maybe with the fact that you can view most textbooks online will save the districts money because they do not have to purchase textbooks. Altough I like hard copies for some students. That is a really tough question...
ReplyDeleteI actually like a modified school schedule. When I was at my technical school at Keesler AFB, MS, we used a "down Friday" method. Every other week we had a Friday off. Training was made an hour longer each day to facilitate the day off. I loved it because you had that Friday to run errands and make appointments. It worked very well for adults.
ReplyDeleteUsing it for children is a different animal. For many of the parents, it is hard to adapt since they have full time jobs. The parent is then burdened with finding childcare. The better answer to this would be that the entire United States shifts to this schedule :)
I still don't see how schools adding 5-10 minutes on a school day benefits students. What gets done in that extra few minutes? I have seen some parents can't wait until school is officially over as it is, they are picking their children up with 20 minutes of school left.
ReplyDeleteSorry about the pay freeze. That isn't much motivation to complete your master's degree. That has to be very difficult, because you need it to keep your certification valid.
This year we are starting with a two hour delay several Wednesday throughout the year. This alone is going to be a logistical nightmare for parents. What do the working parents do with their children when school starts at 10:50? A morning school program? That isn't free. I think if the short week is implemented a lot of the students with a more challenging home life will be negatively impacted. Some of the students I see get their only hot meals served from through the breakfast and lunch programs at school.
I just don't see any benefits to a shorter school year.