School officials examine four-day week
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
By SARA MOSQUEDA-FERNANDEZ
Staff Writer
EAST CALN — Area school officials are taking a closer look at a four-day school week as they examine ideas to prevent programs and staff from budget cuts.
Depending on what state subsidies are approved by the Legislature, Coatesville Area is seriously considering implementing a four-day school week, and some sources say officials in the Great Valley School District also considered this possibility.
Most states mandate a 180-day school calendar, and more than 120 school districts nationwide use a four-day school week as of 2009. According to the Pennsylvania School Code, public schools and pre-kindergartens must be open for at least 180 days for academic instruction for students.
There is an exception. When “a meritorious educational program warrants,” a school calendar can be measured by hours rather than days, with secondary schools meeting a minimum of 990 hours, and elementary meeting 900 hours, as mandated by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
To meet those hours, Coatesville Area would extend its school day by about one hour and 20 minutes for elementary schools and 45 minutes a day for the middle and high schools.
The district would start the 2011-12 academic year after Labor Day, as mandated by House Bill 137, and incorporate holidays into the 154-day calendar. Each week would consist of four lengthened instructional days, with the fifth day off.
The district’s 10 required teacher in-service days would therefore occur before and after the school year and on some of the fifth weekdays when students would be absent from school.
Advocates of the shorter school week say this schedule could produce higher attendance, better morale, longer class periods and savings in transportation, facilities and personnel costs.
According to a January 2009 research brief by University of Southern Maine professors Christine Donis-Keller and David Silvernail, the savings of schools operating under a four-day school week range from 2 percent to 9 percent of a school district’s operating budget.
Coatesville Area officials estimate it would save about $1.7 million a year with this change.
Opponents of the proposal say the savings would be minimal, the schedule would create extra daycare costs and the longer days could exhaust younger students. Some also point out that the 180-day school calendar is already three weeks shorter than almost every industrialized nation in Europe and Asia, where students habitually outperform U.S. students in math, science and reading.
At a district committees meeting earlier this month, Coatesville Area Superintendent Richard Como said no research or evidence indicates that a four-day week has negative or positive affects on student performance and learning.
Como said this plan would receive serious consideration if other proposed cuts and consolidations were insufficient to close the district’s projected budget deficit.
To contact staff writer Sara Mosqueda-Fernandez, send an e-mail to smfernandez@dailylocal.com.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter:
www.twitter.com/wcdailylocal
www.facebook.com/dailylocalnews
URL: http://www.dailylocal.com/articles/2011/04/19/news/doc4dacf2b63eafa142408919.prt
© 2011 dailylocal.com, a Journal Register Property
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are moderated. Although I asked people to sign their comments (or at least use their initials), I have only been getting 'anonymous' comments. I have changed the settings to that the posts will need some sort of identifier.