An increasing number of school districts in the Lewis County area and around the state are shortening instructional schedules by replacing full days with partial days or cutting the academic year.
Washington school districts must provide students 180 days of instruction a year. But increasing numbers of districts aren’t doing that under the state Board of Education’s waiver program that lets schools shave days off the calendar and a loophole that allows partial days to count fully.
A partial day counts toward the 180-day requirement while also giving teachers professional development hours, time for training and implementing new state requirements.
At least a dozen Lewis County area school districts have 13 or more early release days built into the calendar.
Napavine and Adna school districts both have shortened school years, with 176 and 177 days, respectively.
Educators say shortened student schedules allow time for professional development when state budget cuts have left no funding to pay for training outside of class.
Jami Lund, a Centralia resident and an education reform fellow at Olympia’s Freedom Foundation, said the change is alarming.
“I see the shifting of the schedule to be a service decline,” he said. “It’s a win-win for the adults, but I’m not convinced it’s good for students.”
Administrators are using shortened school schedules as a bargaining chip in contract negotiations with teacher unions, Lund said, which puts student learning at risk and shortchanges taxpayers.
“The reason I don’t like a shorter school year is because there’s research that shows it impacts student learning,” Lund said.
Lund said he does not discredit the need for professional development. But it shouldn’t be at the expense of instruction, he added.
Napavine Superintendent Rick Jones said the shortened school year and the district’s 16 early release days have allowed teachers beneficial time to work toward implementing new state standards and instructional framework.
A lack of state funding, Jones said, has lead to districts carving teacher training time out of student schedules because employees still must receive payment for their work.
Jones said simply keeping students in their chairs longer does not necessarily lead to increased learning.
“It isn’t about legislation to keep a child in a seat, it’s what happens when they’re in that seat,” he said, noting development time makes teachers more effective.
Still, shortening days creates inefficiency because costs such as transportation and meals remain the same even if students come late or leave early, Lund said.
The Morton School District has the highest number — 42 early release days — in the area, followed by Oakville, which has 36 partial days.
“A partial school day is, at best, a disruptive day,” Lund said.
Morton Superintendent Tom Manke agrees that a full day remains preferable, but said teachers need training to improve in the classroom, and the cost of doing so outside of school time is too high.
In addition to shortening 42 of the days, the district is paying teachers extra for lengthening high school student days on regular release days.
Morton Junior/Senior High School is receiving School Improvement Grants for three years because the state deemed it a Required Action District, due to students’ poor marks on standardized tests.
For the 2012-13 school year, the district added 20 minutes to the instructional day by increasing each class period for students in grades seven through 12 by three minutes. When the district could not demonstrate how three extra minutes impacted student learning, Manke said, administrators added 30 minutes to advanced and intervention programs instead.
The collective bargaining agreement states that teachers will be compensated for the extra time at their per diem rate.
According to the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction data, the average Morton teacher earns $50,847 annually, or $282 a day. For an additional 20 minutes of instruction, each teacher is earning an extra $10 to $15 a day, or more than $1,000 a year.
More than 10 area school districts are using Time Responsibility and Incentive days to raise teacher pay, sometimes with local levy funding.
“Levy money shouldn’t go to employee paychecks without more services,” Lund said.
For the school years 2009-10 and 2010-11, eight and a half additional workdays were available to Centralia teachers in the collective bargaining agreement.
The agreement in 2011-12 created some controversy when it raised that number to 12 to offset a state wage reduction. The contract adopted in the fall of 2012 brought that number up to 13.5 and then 14 this year.
Centralia Superintendent Steve Bodnar said that time is vital for teacher training, but the district is recouping at least some instructional hours by decreasing the number of early release days for kindergarten through sixth-grade students.
Bodnar said state funding is woefully inadequate and he hopes the Legislature will support professional development time.
“If we have time to develop curriculum, we have better clarity in what we teach in the classroom,” he said.
Still, Lund said, since most districts are already paying extra wages for supplemental time, it should be possible to preserve the optimal student schedule.
“It frustrates me to see the interests of adults prevailing over the interests of students,” Lund said. “Unfortunately, families and taxpayers don’t get a seat at the collective bargaining sessions where these things are decided.”
Teacher unions will renegotiate contracts in Morton, Mossyrock, Onalaska, Napavine, Rochester and Toledo this year.
•••
Amy Nile: (360) 807-8235
twitter.com/AmyNileReports
www.facebook.com/AmyNileTheChronicle
