Some New York City schools to close for two days before the last school day

May 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Some New York City schools will close for two days and reopen for the last day of class, according to  The New York Times.  Since the schools did not use any snow days, the Department of Education is granting schools permission to cancel classes on the last Monday and Tuesday in June. State regulations require students to attend on the final day, June 27, which is a half-day.  Anna M. Phillips reports that if students skip June 27, “it will affect the schools, as attendance is one of the criteria they are measured by.”

And some parents are likely to stay put, afraid that missing the last day would hurt their children’s attendance record, which is a consideration in admissions to selective schools.

Teachers will not have the two days off — they are to use them as professional development days to prepare for curriculum and special-education changes coming next year.

Phillips also reports that schools will be required to take in any students whose parents cannot find daycare June 25 and 26.

Filed Under: professional development, school year

Canyons School District considers ending early dismissals on Fridays

May 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In Utah, the Canyons School District is considering ending early-dismissal Fridays for the elementary schools. Each school day Monday through Thursday would be shortened by 20 minutes and teachers would still be contracted to an eight-hour day.

Benjamin Wood, ksl.com, reports that teachers in the Canyons Education Association are split 50/50 on the proposed change, according to president Ross Rogers. Canyons spokeswoman Jennifer Toomer-Cook expressed the hope that the new schedule would do away with the thinking of some parents that attendance on Fridays is optional.

Wood reports that Rogers agrees with Toomer-Cook:

Rogers agreed and said that if the schedule change is approved, it will hopefully make clear that Fridays are a regular curriculum day.

“Parents do view it as a wasted day and an OK day to take a three-day vacation,” he said.

Another advantage of the proposed change would be that teachers would have a larger portion of planning time each day. Toomer-Cook said that for years teachers and principals have expressed a wish to have more time in the school day for collaboration.

At the school board meeting April 17, board president Tracy Cowdell indicated that a final vote on the schedule change was being delayed to allow for more input from parents and teachers, according to Deseret News. On May 4 the school district announced that discussion on the schedule would not move forward until after the start of the 2012-13 school year. Here is the announcement:

The Canyons Board of Education and Administration continue to consider a proposed elementary school schedule that would give students consistent instructional time and provide built-in professional development time for faculty. However, the District will not move forward with discussions and deliberations on the schedule until next school year. The schedules that elementary school communities have used in the past will remain in place for the 2012-2013 school year.

The Board has given preliminary approval to the schedule, but indicated it would like to seek more input from various stakeholders who would be affected by the change. Additionally, a change to the elementary schedule would require a sufficient amount of time to allow families and community partners to adjust their schedules, and for District Transportation to adjust bus routes.

The Board and Administration look forward to continuing discussions on the schedule next school year.

Canyons School District serves approximately 33,000 students in 29 elementary schools, eight middle schools, four high schools, and four special programs.

Filed Under: early dismissals, school day, teacher planning time

New Jersey considers changing requirements for professional development for teachers

May 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

NJ Spotlight  reports that there will soon bee a change in the state requirements for professional development for teachers. “For more than a decade, the state’s teachers have been subject to rules enacted under former Gov. Christie Whitman that require they accumulate 100 hours of approved professional development every five years, ” John Mooney wrote.

The 100 hours would be replaced by broader requirements that each school develop its own teams to determine professional development needs. The draft also included a new requirement for one classroom period a week of collaborative planning.

Filed Under: professional development, teacher planning time, Uncategorized

Brad Center is wrong in saying that time in the classroom is an outdated concept

May 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Former Fairfax County School Board Member Brad Center (Lee District) writes that “time in the classroom”  is an outdated concept. He argues that “We can now offer on-line textbooks, interactive discussion forums, on-line or virtual classes, and even a virtual school (as FCPS is now considering), that do not require children to actually sit in a classroom.”

I posted the following response to his op-ed in the Centreville, VA Patch:

Brad Center joins Superintendent Jack Dale in minimizing the importance of time in the classroom. Unfortunately, for many years the Fairfax County School Board has minimized the importance of time in school and has shortchanged elementary school students by dismissing them two hours early every Monday. This early dismissal policy is simply wrong. Will this error now be compounded by having two or three early dismissals every week? Or switching to a three-day or four-day school week?
Sure, it is fine to have e-books or online tests, or other uses of computers and the internet. However, who is supposed to be supervising these young students while they study on-line? Why not let them spend their time in the classroom, or on the playground, in the gym, or in the cafeteria? Why are school leaders so overly anxious to keep students away from the school buildings as much as possible? Are they trying to sell us some magic beans that will take the place of desks, chairs, and teachers?

Filed Under: Monday early dismissal, online learning, school day, school schedules

Aspen considers Wednesday early dismissals for all students

May 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In Colorado, the Aspen Board of Education is considering expanding early-release Wednesdays to all students. The Aspen Times reports that currently the elementary school students are dismissed at 1:40 p.m. on Wednesdays and 3:10 p.m. on the other days. Middle and high school students, who are dismissed at 3:15 p.m., have early-dismissal days just four times during the school year.

Reporter Jeanne McGovern describes how the changes would affect the schedules:

To account for the time missed due to early release, class periods for middle and high schoolers would be changed to 95 minutes on regular school days (they are currently 90 minutes) and 75 minutes on early-release days. Five minutes also would be added to each end of the school day for middle and high school students, meaning they would begin their day at 8:05 a.m. and end at 3:20 p.m.

For elementary school students, the change to an all-district early-release schedule means 15 more minutes of class time on Wednesdays and perhaps five more minutes at the end of other school days due to the shared buses.

The Aspen School District consists of a preschool, elementary school, middle school, high school, and a community school. The Aspen Community School is a charter school founded in 1970.

Filed Under: early dismissals

Sukperintendent Dale lists unfunded needs

May 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

At the Fairfax County  Schools Board’s budget work session yesterday, Superintendent Jack Dale listed unfunded needs that he thinks should be considered in the future. Here is his list:

Looking to the Future – Unfunded Needs

  • General and Special Education Class Size
  • Early Childhood Education
  • World Languages (in all schools)
  • Clinical Staffing
  • Teacher Leadership/Time
  • Instructional Coaches, Literacy, Math, and Science
  • National Board Certified Teacher
  • Programme for International Student Assessment
  • Living Wage
  • Preventive Maintenance

I think Dale had a good idea in drawing up a list of unfunded needs. If my memory is correct, around 20 years ago former Superintendent Robert R. “Bud” Spillane stopped including a list of unfunded priorities in his budget documents because he thought it had become a list of nice-sounding items that really were not important enough to actually fund.  I guess it was seen as a sort of consolation prize for some projects that didn’t quite make it to the big leagues of actually being in the current budget.

To me it’s a relief to have a handy list of priorities for the future. To celebrate this positive development, I won’t try to edit this list right now to correct a few major omissions.  For one thing, it is not too late to for the school board to include crucial reforms in the budget for Fiscal Year 2013. If, in the unhappy event that the school board members fail to revise the current draft budget properly to optimize the benefits to students, then they could at least acknowledge that they are aware that these reforms should be made soon by adding them to their own list of unfunded needs.

It is nice to have a first draft of an unfunded list of priorities that can be a starting point for future planning by the school board. It is far better to have worthy projects included in a list for the future than to have them forgotten entirely. The lack of just such a list as this has contributed to a neglect of planning for certain improvements that would be of great benefit to students.

To the Fairfax County School Board—this is your opportunity to start charting a course for the next few years.

Source: Approved Budget Presentation.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Filed Under: teacher planning time

Fairfax County School Board refused to ask for a study of absenteeism on early dismissal days

May 14, 2012 By 6 Comments

On February 28, 2010, I wrote all the members of the Fairfax County School Board to suggest that they ask for a study comparing absences on Mondays in the 16 elementary schools that then had full day Mondays to the absenteeism in the other elementary schools. I said it may also be useful to compare the absenteeism rates on Mondays compared to the other days of the week. I cited a report that student absences in a Florida school district were significantly higher on early-release days: Absenteeism rises on early-release days in Hillsborough Public Schools.

James L. “Jim” Raney (at-large), citing my request, asked the school board to consider asking the superintendent to study absenteeism of students, teachers, and staff in elementary schools on Mondays and on early release days in all of our schools, “with a view toward possibly curtailing use of the half-day Mondays and the early release days.”

This was discussed at a school board Forum on Board Topics April 7, 2010. After I asked him about his request to discuss the topic and the resulting decision, Raney explained that the board voted against the proposed study: “With 3 board members absent, the board voted down my proposed study by a vote of 5 against to 4 for. Several board members stated that they already knew there is higher absenteeism on half-day Mondays and Early Release days, and several board members stated they would not be inclined to do anything about it if the study did show high absenteeism on those days.”

I would like to thank former at-large school board member Jim Raney for his conscientious effort to persuade the other school board members to ask for a study to consider whether absenteeism is a problem on early dismissal days. Perhaps my comments yesterday criticizing the school board as clueless and inept were a bit too pessimistic. There have been some worthy attempts in the past to make some progress in addressing problems and working for improvements. Perhaps we can hope for these sorts of efforts to gain the support of the majority of the school board members in the future.

Today the school board will review the 2012 FCPS Working Conditions Survey.The Executive Summary states:

Conditions related to the area of Time remain a topic for further consideration. Of the eight constructs examined in the survey, teachers and administrators were least positive about conditions related to time, its use, and mechanisms in place to protect its use. Fairfax educators report that the construct of time is an important driver of student achievement and teacher retention. The construct of Time was also most frequently cited as the most important aspect of teachers’ work environment that affects their willingness to keep teaching at their school. While conditions related to time remain a concern for many educators across the district, it is important to recognize that since 2010, the district has made improvements in all areas captured by common time-related questions across the 2010 and 2012 survey iterations.

It is clearly false and misleading to say the district has made improvements in all areas regarding time in the past two years.. Decreasing the amount of time many students have in school by re-instituting Monday early dismissals in ALL elementary schools is a huge step backwards. None of the recommendations discuss this problem. Apparently the staff is not going to voluntarily discuss this sensitive topic unless specifically asked to address it by a majority of the members of the school board. There are many ways of providing staff planning time without dismissing students early on Mondays. Here is one option: Fairfax Reform Plan.

(Note, this was originally posted this morning. Somehow it disappeared from the blog, so I am re-posting it this evening.)

Filed Under: early dismissals, Monday early dismissal

Many Fairfax principals say they don’t have enough time for instruction

May 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The Washington Examiner reports that less than half of the principals in Fairfax County think that central office administrators were allowing them to spend enough time on instruction, marking an increase of 34 points to 49 percent in the last two years. This is from a comparison between the 2012 and 2010 FCPS Working Conditions Surveys.

Sounds like a pretty big crisis. A crisis caused by the ineptness of the Fairfax County School Board.  The clueless school board, led astray by Superintendent Jack Dale,  eliminated full-day Mondays for 16 elementary schools and has taken no steps to restore this sensible schedule to these schools or expand it to all the elementary schools in Fairfax County. All elementary school students must make do with a substandard schedule which compares unfavorably with the schedules in most other school districts in the Washington metropolitan area.

Monday early dismissals should be eliminated.

 

Filed Under: early dismissals, Monday early dismissal

Professional Learning Community scheme might disrupt student schedules in Rapid City

May 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Yet another school district might allow misguided cost-cutting and the fad for the Professional Learning Community (PLC) model for teacher collaboration to disrupt student schedules. In South Dakota, the Rapid City Area Schools Board of Education reviewed a proposed plan for 27 early-release Wednesdays, which would leave students with only 964.75 hours of contact with teachers, two hours over the state minimum.

According to a report by Lynn Taylor Rick in the Rapid City Journal, currently students are in contact with teachers 5-3/4 hours each day. This amount wound drop to four hours on early release days. This time does not include lunch or recess. Superintendent Tim Mitchell asked the members of board of education to approve the early release calendar at their May 17 meeting. He noted that after negotiations with the Rapid City Education Association are complete, the calendar may need to be amended.

Rick also reported that the board discussed the possibility of adding five minutes to other days of the week to make up some of the lost teacher/student contact time. He also notes that the district-wide PLC model would save $1.5 million.

Saving money by keeping students out of the school buildings for longer periods of time is very short-sighted. Also, there are plenty of school districts which use the PLC model for teacher collaboration without shortening the student schedule with early dismissals. Other options for implementing PLCs are discussed in this posting: Professional Learning Communities do not need to resort to early dismissals of students.

Filed Under: early dismissals, lunch, recess, teacher planning time

Washington Post calls for schools to help fight obesity

May 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

“With healthier lunches, the controlled environment in public schools can be a primary tool in fighting obesity,” an editorial in today’s Washington Post argues.

“Start by removing sugary soda and candy from vending machines,” The Post says. “Provide more time for exercise, instruction on why it matters and education on healthy eating that isn’t a joke.”

Fairfax County Public Schools should pay attention to this and many other calls for  schools to provide more time for exercise. Fairfax is seriously deficient in this. The current limit of 10 minutes for each daily recess period is absurdly restrictive. Sixty minutes per week for physical education in the elementary schools is not enough.

See also Schools in Midland, Texas, consider extending recess to 30 minutes

Filed Under: lunch, physical education, recess
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