re: Avoyelles Parish votes for 4 day school week

Give those teachers a much needed 20% reduction of work load

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It’s not about the time a kid is in school but the quality of education. Maybe LA needs to change something to boost those scores.

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Absolutely. You don't even need longer days if you go 4 a week. LA's struggling scores have everything to do with a large percentage of students and their parent not valuing education at all and nothing to do with hours in the classroom.

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The curriculum matches on and parents do 90 percent of the instruction.

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Been doing a Tues-Fri school system for over 10 years now. Hours are like 7:40-4:00. Here’s what I see:
Pros:
1. No teacher shortage. Teachers waiting in line to work 4 days a week.
2. All your doctor appointments, extracurricular activities are all scheduled on Mondays so no one actually misses school.
3. No homework. Due to being in school so much, there’s no homework sent home.
4. It’s damn near a windfall with no utilities running an additional 4 days a week, and no busses running 4 days a week. That money is reinvested in hiring qualified teachers and sprucing up the infrastructure.
5. It’s good for parents in custody battles. With 12 days now allocated to weekends, you can almost share custody with the other parent 50/50, which in turn equalizes the child support.
Cons:
1. It’s hard on parents of little ones, they have to be in daycare or spend the day with a grandparent or relative if the parent or parents work. The older kids love it though.
2. As a result, of daycare, relative, etc can’t keep your kid, the employee can’t come to work. So it’s a trickledown effect.
3. Kids are starving when they get home. This is partly due to the hours, but also due to the Michelle Obama cut edible food out of the school lunch programs and no sugar sold on campus. (Direct result is kids eating Popeyes and Sonic and other ff as soon as school is over - not sure that has anything to do with 4 day week though)
4. The damn state- mandated testing weeks require all staff and students to attend 5 days a week. This is absurd. The kids put in over 50 hrs that week. If the State would recognize systems with 4 day weeks that would be great.
5. Many children sadly starve on Mondays because for many, school is the only place they eat, and they cannot afford ff. Our system has a program that busses those kids in Summer to eat, but I don’t think they do that on Mondays.
6. Our community is slowly shifting to a 4 day work week as a result. Many restaurants and businesses are now closed on Mondays. Our phones at work hardly ring on Mondays and many businesses consider running skeleton staff on Mondays.

I would say after ten years, we have adjusted, and we’re doing fine. There is some significant give and take on both sides. Bottom line is if it saves money, it’s happening whether you like it or not.

Laugh all you want.

Kid has a test today where the module came home Monday. No classroom instruction other than to explain where to find the info on tech books and netgeo.

Probably spent two hours on it last night. Which was a no homework night.

Why? Because it is in the curriculum to be done this week.

I assume you are in education. You are helpless in fixing it. The system is so bad you can’t even see the issues, you are used to the dysfunction Parents at the magnet school my kids go to spend about an hour a night on groupme trying to figure out what in the holy hell is going on.

I am done, my wife does homework. I will pull them out and place in private school when she gets tired of teaching the kids.

Well, you may do 90 percent of your child's instruction, and kudos to you and your wife for caring about your child's' education, but a whole lot of people in this state, and country, do not do any instruction at home. And therein lies the problem. So I wasn't laughing at you personally.

There are many kindergarteners and first graders who have never had a book read to them before they start school. There are 5th and 6th graders that don't have anything explained to them at home. There are high schoolers who aren't taught that getting a high school diploma is essential to functioning in today's society. It's crazy.

I'm sure you do a great job of educating your kids at home. I am in education, and I try to give my child more education at home then they get at school, not textbook work, but reading books and understanding how the world works.

90% of parents do not do that. Then wonder why little jimmy can't read. Our whole education system is a mess.

We honestly need tiers in this country.

Tier 1: Teach them how to read, and how to do basic math. This for the students who do not value education. Get them a basic high school diploma.

Tier 2: Trade school education.

Tier 3: College prep education

Tier 4: Advanced level and extreme rigor.

Put them in and if they can't hack a level drop them down a tier.

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Unfricking real. Kids can’t pass a leap test for shite. But by all means, let them spend less time in class. This fricking state.

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It's the same amount of time.

Glad you learned how to read gud

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It ain’t gonna get no better on a 4 day week

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Damn, it looks like you could’ve used all 7

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LA's struggling scores have everything to do with a large percentage of students and their parent not valuing education at all and nothing to do with hours in the classroom.

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This. It all starts from home. If a kid/parent don't care, more or less time/money won't make a difference.

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Kid has a test today where the module came home Monday. No classroom instruction other than to explain where to find the info on tech books and netgeo.

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Someone decided the kids weren't learning enough. (That someone was right, by the way). So curriculum expanded to cover more topics.

However, we didn't expand the school day or change how we teach to provide the time to teach these additional topics.

However, the topics are still on "the test" so the teachers still have to throw the work at the kids and hope for the best.

A few weeks ago, one of my kids went to Starbase for a week (an amazing program, by the way). They got to school, right after attendance was taken, got on the bus, went to Starbase, and stayed there until 2 pm. Then back to school, and about an hour, at most, of instructional time before the end of the day.

On Friday, they had three tests (I didn't realize any this until after as my wife usually does homework with the kids before I get home). My child, along with pretty much everyone else in the class, bombed all three tests. Turns out, they didn't really cover the material, in class, that was tested, because the kids were at Starbase. Apparently, there was homework assigned that covered the material, but because they were at Starbase, they only briefly went over the homework each day.

I had a nice meeting with the school principal, who basically said, yes, it's stupid, but the teachers have to "cover" the material, and if they took a week off (even though the kids were at Starbase) then they would never catch up and have all the material covered before LEAP.

She also told me that the failed test scores would be thrown out, that this happens for any tests given during Starbase week, but they don't tell the kids that ahead of time (and our teacher was supposed to send all the parents a message to that effect, but she did not).