More Schools Go To 4-Day Week To Cut Costs 614
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the education-has-a-poor-compression-ratio dept.
from the education-has-a-poor-compression-ratio dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "As schools return to session in South Dakota, more than one-fourth of students in the state will only be in class from Monday through Thursday as budget constraints lead school districts to hack off a day from the school week. Larry Johnke, superintendant of the Irene-Wakonda school district, says the change will save his schools more than $50,000 per year. In order to make up for the missing day, schools will add 30 minutes to each of the other four days and shorten the daily lunch break. 'In this financial crisis, we wanted to maintain our core content and vocational program, so we were forced to do this,' says Johnke. Experts say research is scant on the effect of a four-day school week on student performance, but many of the 120 districts that have the shortened schedule nationwide say they've seen students who are less tired and more focused, which has helped raise test scores and attendance. Others say that not only did they fail to save a substantial amount of money by being off an extra day, they also saw students struggle because they weren't in class enough and didn't have enough contact with teachers."
4 days weeks is stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wow... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Informative)
Huh. My mom retired as a teacher after 35 year and never came close to making that kind of money. And she taught summer school every year to make ends meet. Doesn't sound like your description.
In fact her retirement package from the state was so poor that she went back to work.
Re:I can see it now... (Score:4, Informative)
South Dakota teacher salaries are very, very, very low.
http://teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state [teacherportal.com]
26,000 is the average.
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Informative)
If your numbers are from the early 90s you need to recheck them.
Budget cuts in the mid and late 90s and mid to late '00s destroyed schedules like that. In many districts COLAs of 1-3% were all the raise teachers got. Now its even worse, my sister took a 20% cut in '10 to avoid the district having to lay off 25% of staff.
I've worked in public, private school administration and state educational agencies since 1997, my wife is a 7-12 teacher with experience at contract negotiations in the PacNW, sister is a 9-12 science teacher, brother in law is a history teacher. I've been through 3 Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations. Your numbers and example don't hold water.