York School Officials Eye Longer School Days

By Amber Lester Wednesday, June 09, 2010

It’s not official yet, but it’s likely York County students will be spending more time in the classroom starting in the 2011-12 school year.

At a work session on Monday, the York County School Board came to a consensus to lengthen the school day by 10 minutes for elementary schools and 15-20 minutes for middle and high schools. The division’s administration will spend the next school year working with principals and staff to determine the next steps in the process to restructure the school days. Those changes could include alterations to bus schedules or the way high school days are structured, but school board member Barbara Haywood asked that the board be kept informed as the administration faces those hurdles.

In March 2007, York County received a recommendation to review the length of its school day from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ accreditation team. While York meets the minimum amount of hours required by the state (990 hours of instruction), it has a shorter school day than many divisions in the state.

York elementary students spend six hours and 26 minutes at school; the state average is six hours and 38 minutes. York middle and high school students spend an average of six hours and 27 minutes at school; the state average is six hours and 34 minutes for middle schools and six hours and 45 minutes for high schools.

At Monday’s work session, board members seemed to favor the idea particularly because the recommendation came from the SACS accreditation team. Robert George said increasing pressure to meet educational standards, such as those required by the No Child Left Behind act and the state’s Adequate Yearly Progress measures, swayed him to support the initiative.

“I’ve been a little hesitant to support this … it’s more of a timing issue. We’re in a bad budget year, we’ve slowed down our technology initiatives, we’ve prevented step increases for teachers,” he said. “Having said that, I don’t feel that a bad budget year should prevent us from striving to improve student achievement.”

Haywood said that if the advice was coming from a team specializing in accreditation, the division should take it. “We have been proactive about a lot of things,” she said, offering the county’s early use of virtual classrooms as evidence. “I think we owe our students a chance to reach accreditation standards.”

At an informational meeting last week, a small group of parents seemed unconvinced the extra time is necessary. They said if the division wants to improve, it should look at how the time is used before adding more time. Some parents said they would want to see more time devoted to recess or exercise. Superintendent Eric Williams said the teachers will decide how to use the time, but it will be used to teach the curriculum. He said it was an opportunity for teachers to answer one more question or test out a new lesson plan.

If the board approves the plan to lengthen days, teachers will spend more time in the classroom, but their contractual hours will not increase.