ATLANTA --- Schools may change the length of their school year if a bill in the House passes.
Public schools would be able to create their schedules based on the number of hours instead of the number of days and would no longer be restricted to 180 eight-hour days per year.
That would allow school systems to schedule four days a week, for longer sessions each day. Or, they could use five extended-hour days each week and shorten the number of weeks.
Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ranger, introduced House Bill 193 on Jan. 29. It is currently in the House Education Committee.
"I had multiple folks with school systems approach me about it, mainly for budget reasons," he said.
Reducing the number of days saves taxpayers the expense of transporting students, serving meals and heating or cooling buildings.
Kindergarten programs also would be allowed a different schedule equivalent to 810 hours per year, which equals 180 of the traditional 4.5-hour days now required.
Schools that choose an alternative schedule will obtain lunch-program funding based on 1,520 annual hours.
Child care might be a concern to some, but Mr. Graves believes parents already know how to deal with that during summers or holidays.
"You have to recognize that there are many holidays each year to split up the semesters," Mr. Graves said. "I think that families and school systems have adapted to that."
Comments
I hope if the school day is lenghtened they will cut out homework for the youger grades. My grandchild is in first grade and comes home with a book to read each night and three homework sheets. child is an honor student but a worn out child. I was wondering just what do they do for classroom work at school????
believe me, they are worked just as much in the classroom. my kids are in HS now and i work in a 1st grade class. the work they are given is phenomenal. a huge change from when my children were in elementary. we touch on fractions, writing paragraphs, compound words, probability, contractions etc. these kids can barely spell common three letter words. 5 still don't know their left from their right hand, barely remember to capitalize the first word of a sentence let alone punctuate the end. but...they say they are like sponges and should be exposed to a wide array of curriculum. i don't quite see them retaining the very basics and that bothers me.
There are 19 kids in my K class. The school is 65% minority and almost 40% free lunch. 14 of them are writing sentences and sounding out words they can't spell. Some of the kids' work is just amazing. The other 5 never do homework and barely know the alphabet or sounds. Two of those four are behavior problems. Think there's a connection? Homework is CRITICAL to school success.
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