After butting heads over holiday breaks, exam schedules and
teacher work days, the school calendar committee learned to
compromise.
After butting heads over holiday breaks, exam schedules and teacher work days, the school calendar committee learned to compromise.
A tentative bargain could get exams out of the way before the winter break without sending students back to school the second Thursday of August. Instead of two weeks early, school could start one week earlier than usual and a staff development day in October could be moved to March, ending the semester in time for the holiday break. The first semester would be slightly shorter than the second but days are lost out of the second semester for standardized testing anyway.
A committee of stakeholders convened multiple times in the past year to plan the school calendars for 2009/2010 and 2010/2011. Teachers, administrators, classified staff and paraprofessionals sat down and played a numbers game.
Elementary school teachers wanted a late start to avoid August’s notorious heat. But cooler classrooms would come at the expense of completing the fall semester before the holiday break, a concept high school teachers believe will benefit students.
Gilroy High School teachers and students agreed that holding semester exams before the break would provide a “clean cut” and allow students time to recharge and start the second semester fresh.
Learning about 80 days worth of curriculum, breaking for two weeks and then coming back to be tested isn’t exactly conducive to high exam scores, teachers said.
“We want them to do well on the semester exams because they’re on the transcripts that go on to colleges,” said Karen Hockemeyer, U.S. History teacher at GHS. “Think about your own children and how much time they put into learning or reviewing during Christmas. It’s not much.”
But trustees want a unified calendar for a unified school district.
“Compromise is what I’m looking for,” Board President Rhoda Bress said. “Everybody needs to give a little bit.”
If the district weren’t a unified school district, the calendar clash wouldn’t be an issue, she said.
“But the committee can’t just look at any one grade. Quality education can happen on any schedule. Teachers are looking for what would be best in a perfect world, but people will adapt.”
By law, California schools have to be in session 180 days of the year. Whether those days are stretched over 12 months or squashed into seven, educators are looking out for what’s best for the students, said Gregg Chisolm, fourth grade teacher at Luigi Aprea Elementary School.
“People just think we want a bunch of days off because we don’t want to go to work,” the 30-year educator said. “If we want to go 180 straight days, we can be out by May 10, but I don’t know how many people are going to be standing when it’s over.”
Educators want school to be in session on days when student attendance is strong, and that’s not the Wednesday before Thanksgiving or the Monday before Veterans Day when the holiday is on a Tuesday, Chisolm said. That’s how schools get money from the state.
“We’re constantly trying to calculate what will cause people to come and go,” Chisolm said. “We’re trying to maximize people in the classroom.”
But trustees called into question the breaks that riddle the current schedule with holes.
Currently, students begin school on a Thursday in late August, get a three-day weekend right off the bat for Labor Day, get Halloween off in October – while teachers have a work day – and have five days off in November between Veterans Day and Thanksgiving. And that’s just getting started.
A two-week winter break is followed by two long weekends in January, a week-long break in February and another one in April plus a few more three-day weekends sprinkled in for good measure.
In particular, the February break, or “ski week” as Trustee Denise Apuzzo called it, is disruptive and unnecessary, she said.
After weighing the pros and cons of the February break the committee agreed to keep it.
“Christmas is just hectic,” said Michelle Nelson, Gilroy Teachers Association president and calendar committee member. “February is a true vacation.”
With more than 900 employees in the district, Nelson said taking the February break was a good idea. Superintendent Deborah Flores agreed that “regular breaks help kids.”
Apuzzo also questioned the rationale behind starting school on a Thursday, especially since many families opt not to send their students in until Monday anyway.
But Chisolm said starting school with only two days allows teachers to sort out scheduling snafus and set ground rules with their students so they’re ready to crack the books on Monday.
“Even two days of wasted time without curriculum isn’t good,” Apuzzo said.
The tentative calendar agreement is not drastically different but is a true compromise, Nelson said.
“Besides, the hallmark of a true compromise is that no one is completely happy,” she said.
It’s not a perfect solution but it’s a start, she said. Plus, the superintendent and trustees hoped the committee would recommend a unified calendar at the Oct. 16 board meeting.
“It seems like a compromise that will help everybody at all grade levels,” Bress said. “It will give everyone a little something they wanted.”
