By Carla Branch
alexandrianews.org
Alexandria City School Board and Superintendent Sherman in session. (Photo: Regan Kireilis)
The Alexandria School Board voted 8-1 to add 10 minutes to the beginning and 20 minutes to the end of each school day to make up lost instructional time missed because of snow. Elementary schools will open at 7:50 a.m. and dismiss students at 2:55 p.m.; middle school students will begin their day at 8:20 a.m. and finish at 3:30 p.m. and high school students will start at 8:25 a.m. and be dismissed at 3:35 p.m. The new schedule will begin on March 8, continuing until June 4.
Just before the end of school yesterday, Alexandria City Public School Superintendent Morton Sherman sent an email to ACPS staff that, beginning Monday, March 1, students would arrive at school 15 minutes early and leave 15 minutes later than currently scheduled. He didn’t count on an elected School Board that has been pressured to do something else.
“I agree with the speaker from earlier tonight that recommended against a double disruption,” said Board Member Charles Wilson. “Why can’t we just add 30 minutes to the end of the day and disrupt people’s schedules once?”
Deputy Superintendent Cathy David explained. “The elementary school principals prefer adding time to the end of the day but that doesn’t work for the high school. If we add 30 minutes to the end of the day, student athletes will miss as much as an hour of instructional time because they must leave early to get to games,” she said. “Also, we can’t add time to the end of the elementary day and at the beginning for high school students because we don’t have enough buses to accommodate that. What ever we do, it must be uniform throughout the school system.”
Sherman explained further. “Some of our high school students have jobs that begin at 4:00 p.m. And many of those students depend on that money. If we add time to the end of the school day, they may not make it to those jobs,” he said.
Board Member Arthur Peabody found the entire discussion disturbing. “I am underwhelmed by this entire discussion,” he said. “I wonder what we are really trying to accomplish here. I was willing to look at adding 30 minutes to the end of the day because adding a block of real instructional time made sense. However, now we seem to be letting bus schedules drive educational decisions. I find the whole discussion disturbing.”
In the end, the Board decided to add 10 minutes to the beginning of every day and 20 minutes to the end. “Ten minutes in the morning will not make much difference to when parents have to get their elementary school students to the bus. Right now, some of our buses are arriving at 7:40 a.m. And students have to wait on the bus for staff to be on duty,” David said.
Board Chair Yvonne Folkerts asked that the additional time be evaluated. “At the end of the year, I would like a report on how this time was used and whether we could consider adding time to the school day permanently,” she said. “I have always thought that was a good idea.”
The time will be used to make up 30 hours of instructional time. “The State requires us to make up 15 hours and our elementary school students have missed 61.5 hours, our high school students, 66 hours of instructional time. If we miss any more days, we can’t add any extra time,” David said.
Jefferson-Houston Gets New Focus
The School Board voted unanimously to make Jefferson-Houston a K-8, Primary Years Program-Middle Years Program focus school.
“We should pause for a moment and reflect on just what we have done for this school,” Peabody said. “Since many of us became Board members, we have spent a great deal of time looking at Jefferson-Houston and trying to make decisions that will improve this school.
“We have seen a revolving door for principals and that has clearly been an obstacle to improving student achievement. Every year that Kimberly Graves remains at Jefferson-Houston is a record for the past decade. She and her staff are to be commended for embracing this new focus. I am very optimistic for the future,” Peabody said.
Modified Open Enrollment
Despite a number of questions, the Board seems poised to adopt a modified open enrollment policy for next year. It will cap class sizes a elementary schools and allow students to be moved from their neighborhood schools to nearby schools with space if necessary.
“We must use common sense in implementing this policy,” Sherman said. “That’s why I would like the flexibility to make decisions about specific schools. If we are already at capacity in kindergarten at George Mason, for example, and there is one additional student who registers, I would like to be able to allow that child into a kindergarten class of 20 students without adding another section or transferring that student to another school.”
Asked about secondary school class sizes, Dr. Margee Walsh said: “We have to look at how many students are registered for each class and determine class sizes based on those registrations. We treat class sizes a little differently in secondary school than we do at the elementary level.”