Whitehall Considers a Four-Day School Week
The Whitehall School District is in the second year of evaluating the viability of adopting the four-day school calendar for its K-12 program. The committee doing the data gathering will make a recommendation to the school board in April regarding the 2008-2009 school year.
In an effort to continue to successfully meet the testing requirements on NCLB through research-based instruction, and in an attempt to minimize the impact of the pending budget shortfall by saving some money, WSD is seriously considering the four-day school week.
Click here to view the decision-making process in Whitehall, and to view other links to research and educational organizations. http://whitehall.schoolwires.com/10911032811415317/site/default.asp
If you are from Whitehall and have an opinion, question or comment on the possibilities of the four-day week, please click on the gray “comment” word below this text and share your thoughts. Whatever you submit will be immediately visible to all (just so you know!).
February 12th, 2008 at 10:10 am
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March 4th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
“Harper said the cons include concerns that the day is too long for kindergarten through third grade students. ” This is a quote I took from the Montana Standard Article. This is a pretty big “con” in my opinion. As the mother of a first grader and a soon-to-be kindergartener, this is a big concern for me. The current schedule is already a long day for these younger kids, and I think adding even another 40 minutes is going to be very difficult. K-3 are very important years in school. My son is learning math, has learned to read and learned to spell in the last two years. Those are pretty major staples in their education, and I don’t think we should make these years any harder for these kids than we have to.
I have not heard anything concrete on how much money this will save our school system, but I don’t think any amount is worth sacrificing the value of education. I think there are other ways we can cut money (for example, I don’t think sports teams need new uniforms every other year, I don’t think we need an activity bus and I don’t think the High School needs a big screen TV.) As a member of the community, those things are quite confusing when we are trying to find ways to save money.
I think something else that needs to be considered is that there are a lot of parents who are very strongly against this. I have heard people talk about homeschooling and trying to find other schools for their kids to attend. This may end up hurting our school more than it will help by severely hurting the enrollment.
I think we should try our chances with a Mill Levy. I think it’s a much better option.
March 6th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Hi Amanda, thank you for your comment!
If you look at the way the quote you pulled from the Standard is worded, it says that the concern is the con, not the actual outcome. People are worried prior to making the switch, but families, teachers and districts are reporting success once they are actually in the schedule, so the worry is misplaced, though very common throughout communities who have comtemplated the 4-day schedule.
Lora Griffin (1st grade teacher) is the person on the committee who specifically researched this issue, and she is willing to discuss her findings with people. In a nutshell, younger students CAN and ARE doing this successfully in other schools, and some of those schools added as much as 1.5 hours to their day. We are only thinking about adding 40-45 minutes per day.
If you would like more details, please talk to Lora individually, or come to the public meeting on March 19th at 6pm in the MS library.
There are many national organizations (PTA, National School Board, etc) that are endorsing this type of schedule as effective, and if it didn’t work, they wouldn’t be doing it, and the schools that tried this schedule out would change back to a five-day week. That isn’t happening in the vast majority of cases, and the schools that I located that did switch back to a traditional schedule made some really odd decisions about the way they implemented the schedule, so it wasn’t working well.
I can go about this for weeks. If you have any questions about this that I can answer, you can email me if you would rather not post questions for all the world to see. hharper@whitehallmt.org
If you are decided against this and don’t have questions, contact your school board member and let them know what you think and why. Communication like that is the reason school board members are there, and ultimately, this decision is theirs.
As far as enrollment goes, the schools of Sheridan, Twin, Whitehall, Cardwell, Harrison and Butte have revolving and connected doors. We pick up students from those districts for a number of reasons, and they pick our students for a number of reasons. Other schools that have made this change lose some kids specifically due to the schedule and gain some specifically due to the schedule. This enrollment concern is also a common one that usually results in “a push,” where you lose about as many as you gain.
A couple small things just because I know the answers: the projected savings for one year is about $48,000, which equates to one teacher, or a chunk of supplies, the salary cost of living adjustment for one year, or two classroom aides, or whatever else is needed. The activity bus belongs to Harlowe’s bus service, not the school. We don’t own any buses at all. I asked Mr Audet about the new uniform cycles, and he said that every five years bball uniforms are replaced, but then the varsity uniforms are handed down to JV, JV to C squad, etc. I don’t know the turn-around time for new ones, though, but by the time they get to C-squad,they are pretty beat up. Uniform expenses do come out of the general fund budget.
Thank you so much for taking the time to post your thoughts. I hope the response is helpful.