As published in the Record Journal on Thursday March 7, 2013
By Eric Vo
Record-Journal staff
evo@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2235
Twitter:@ericvoRJ
WALLINGFORD — While the amount of time the town’s students are in the classroom has been steadily decreasing, the school system was still ahead of the state average until recently.
Wallingford children were in school more than others in the state — by anywhere from a little more than 10 hours to 27 hours — from 2002-03 to2009-10. But in 2010-11, the most recent year for which data on instruction time is available from the Connecticut Department of Education, town students were in school for 978.8 hours, while the state average was 1,000.
The amount of instructional time is impacted by many factors, one of which is how the school calendar is drawn. The Board of Education is examining the 2013-14 school calendar now and will vote on it Monday. It is expected to include five days when students will come in two hours late or be dismissed two hours early. School Superintendent Salvatore Menzo isn’t concerned that the town’s classroom time has been trending downward overall, and stressed that the 10 hours of lost instructional time built into next year’s calendar does not indicate a trend; in 2013-14 the school year will swell to 184 days, more than offsetting those 10 hours.
Students are coming in late or being let our early on those five days so that teachers can have time for professional development.
“I think we definitely made the appropriate recommendation to offer time for teachers,” Menzo said. “If we didn’t pick up an additional two days, the recommendation would be different. Going from 182 school days to 184 seems like a good decision — we’re not reducing the time and we’re giving more opportunities for teachers.”
The 2012-13 school calendar brings students to school for 182 days. Going to school more than the required 180 days is nothing new for the district, Board of Education Chairwoman Roxane McKay said.
“If you look back historically at the number of days our students go compared to the state minimum, I think you would find we always exceeded the 180 days,” she said. “There’s clearly been an emphasis on classroom time.”
Both Menzo and McKay stressed the importance of the added time for professional development, saying teachers need it to prepare new programs for students that are in accordance with the Common Core State Standards.
The Common Core, which was adopted by the state Board of Education on July 7, 2010, “establishes what Connecticut’s public school students should know and be able to do as they progress through grades K-12,” according to the website.
The school board was supposed to vote on the proposed revision to the school calendar during the last meeting, until it was brought up that more discussion may be needed to determine whether it would be more beneficial to students and parents to be dismissed early, rather than come in late. Members of the Operations Committee will continue the discussion at their meeting Monday, and then the full board will get together to vote on the calendar.
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