Your support is needed at the school board meeting on Monday
to help the school board make the right decision concerning educational hours
for secondary students.
Because of the increase in early release time over the last
several years, the school district is not meeting the minimum number of hours
required by state law for students at the middle and high school levels (this
is not an issue at the elementary school). To fix this problem, on Monday June 17th,
the school board plans to simply change the definition of “Actively Engaged in
the Educational Process” to count non-educational time!
However, there is an
alternate solution that easily solves this problem. The idea is that AES would start at 8:00
and go until 3:15 daily (same length of school day as currently). Buses
would drop off students at OMS/AHS before AES (just like they do
now). And OMS/AHS would start at 7:45 and get out at 3:40 (giving
30 more minutes of instruction - to make up for the 30 minutes of passing
time). At the end of the day, buses would run the same route, starting at
the K-5 building first and then pick up students at OMS/AHS just like they do
now (just 15 minutes later since all schools end 15 minutes later).
- Passing time will not need to be counted to meet the state required minimum number of
hours for OMS/AHS students.
- There is no change to the number of hours
teachers work each week.
- There is no change the length of the school year,
holiday breaks or number of contact days.
- There is no change to the morning bus pickup
schedule – it would run as it currently does.
- The afternoon bus schedule would run 15 minutes
later than the current schedule.
However, there is no change to the amount of time that students are on
the bus.
Instead the school board is proceeding down the path to
counting time between classes as students being “actively involved in the
educational process” stating that students are working towards achieving
educational objectives under the supervision of a licensed teacher when walking
from class to class! If the school board is successful in making
this policy change it will result in:
- A continued reduction of the educational time
secondary students receive while at the same time the state continues to
increase graduation requirements – which means many students may not have
enough knowledge to graduate.
- Based on this year’s ACT data approximately 40
seniors would not have graduated with the new state requirements - and this
year’s senior class was an exceptionally strong class!
- Loss of 30 minutes of instruction daily results
in 84 hours of lost instruction each year.
- Over the course of middle school and high
school, a full semester of instruction is lost.
- In addition, it creates even more of discrepancy
between elementary teachers (who cannot count recess as educational time) and
high school teachers who are now getting twice the amount of planning time as
elementary teachers.
- This is a policy change – which means it will
likely be this way FOREVER for all future generations of middle/high school
students making it more and more difficult for our students to get the
educational time they are entitled to by state law and more difficult for
students to graduate.
To implement our proposed idea, the Master Agreement between
the teachers union (AEA) and the school district will need two changes: from 8
hours per day to 40 hours per week, and removal of the requirements for
teachers to show up 15 minutes before and stay 15 minutes after their assigned
schedules. This agreement is only
updated every 3 years and is also on the agenda for Monday’s meeting.
This solution supports the school district’s motto of
“Educational Excellence”, provides OMS/AHS the state required minimum number of
hours, does not require teachers to work more hours each week, does not affect
bussing or the amount of time that the elementary students are in school or on
the bus.
WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT to address this item with the school
board. This is the last
opportunity to affect this change.
The
biggest impact we can have is getting MANY parents at the school board meeting
on June 17
th at 7pm.
Please
plan to attend the school board meeting.
Arrive a few minutes before 7pm to sign up to speak for up to 3
minutes.
If you are unable to attend the
school board meeting, contact school board members by phone to share your
input.
You can find the school board
member names and phone numbers on the district website
here.
We CAN make a difference if we all show up! Please pass this information along to other
ASD parents.
Sincerely,
A-PAGE committee