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Dr. David Hopson |
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February 5 , 2007 The Gateway School District continues to use state funding from a planning grant to explore the idea of expanding learning time. Committees have met to discuss what the day might look like, reviewed potential opportunities for students and staff, and raised concerns over implementing a longer day/year. As they look at a range of ideas, questions continue to rise to the surface. All of these questions are important and relevant to the planning process and many require direct input from students and parents. As a result, you can all look forward to a flurry of surveys that will help us answer some of these questions.
Some families will get more than one survey because the planning process is occurring simultaneously at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Thus any family that has children in more than one level (elementary, middle, or high school) should receive one survey for each level. We are maintaining an open approach throughout this process, so information gained from surveys will be posted on the district website (www.grsd.org), along with minutes, committee members, meeting dates, and links to other expanded day websites. In reviewing survey drafts, it appears that the committees are seeking input to refine their planning direction and measure the overall interest in the idea of expanding learning time. Answers to other questions are found in the grant parameters and guidelines established by the Department of Education (DOE). Some of the issues/questions that have been raised follow with the appropriate response. Why are we developing an implementation plan if this is a planning grant? The planning grant requires that the finished product be an implementation plan that the DOE will review. The DOE can accept the plan as is or recommend changes. Even if DOE accepts our plan, the local districts/schools still have the choice of whether to put the plan into practice. There is a third requirement (the first being the district’s choice, the second having the plan approved) of the state legislature providing the additional funding to support implementation of the plan—without this funding, the district would be unable to move forward even if we wished to do so. Why 25% additional time? This is required to get additional state funding for implementation. The state will not pay for adding less than 25% to our existing schedule. However, this additional time may be composed of a wide variety of activities: study skills/homework help, intramural athletics, club activities, internships, supervised work experience, and a wide range of other activities. We are especially interested in applications of classroom knowledge to hands-on activities i.e., writing skills to publishing a school newspaper, science skills to inventory local flora/fauna, mathematics skills to building items in the shops, etc. Many of these ideas require community input to both plan, and potentially implement, in an expanded learning day. Will the state money continue over time? My crystal ball rarely works, but my guess is that at some point the money will disappear as it has on so many previous initiatives from the state. I would suggest that the planning process itself is worthwhile (even if we elect not to implement a longer day/year) and that even a few years of expanded opportunities for students is better than none. By way of example, the middle school after-school’ program is still operating, although with declining state funding, and has proven beneficial to many students over the years. The bottom line is we don’t know where this planning process will take us, but it is very important to explore the opportunities and get as much input as we can from all stakeholders. As we move forward with the planning process, please feel free to join in at any of the meetings and, as always, feel free to share your opinion with us at myopinion@grsd.org. ### |
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