Critical Issue at tomorrow's school board meeting

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 17^th, 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