Among the numerous bills signed into law by the governor yesterday was one that removes the 180 day instructional requirement for school districts. The requirement will now be based on instructional hours, which was seen as a positive for rural school districts.
Tomahawk District Administrator Sherri Baker pointed out the signing at last night’s school board meeting. That’s because last month the board passed the 2014-2015 calendar pending the bills passage down in Madison.
The calendar approved by the board in March included 175 days, but lengthened each of those days by 10 minutes. Barring any unforeseen changes, the school year will start next year on September 2 and end June 5.
I have been thinking about this and have a few questions.
*By adding 10 minutes to each day how much instruction can be accomplished in that amount of time.
*Will the 10 minutes be at the end of the day or divided between all the class periods during the day, and if so what will be accomplished in that amount of time. If divided among the class periods, that is just over a minute per period, and what good is that going to do.
*What benefit will it be to the students to spend the additional 10 minutes in school each day.
In my humble opinion, this is taking away valuable time from the students and cheating them out of 5 days of instruction that can never be recovered by 10 minutes at a time.
Seems a bit ridiculous when you think about it.