Lee Pulaski, lpulaski@wolfrivermedia.com
Students in the Shawano School District will attend classes six fewer days in the 2015-16 school year than this year.
The rub is that they will be in school for a little longer when they are there.
Students will attend classes for 173 days next year. The calendar for the current school year is 179 days, but six of those days were half-days to allow teachers and staff to have additional time for training and collaboration.
Those half-days are going to be absorbed into the full days next year, according to District Administrator Gary Cumberland. As a result, the district will lengthen the school day by 10 minutes in order to comply with DPI regulations, which were changed in 2014 from days to minutes in school.
“Those half-days are going to be full days (off for students) to allow teachers to dig into their data to make sure they have the opportunity, if need be, to change what they’re doing,” Cumberland said.
The half-days did not provide sufficient time for teachers to look at the data collected and develop future lesson plans accordingly. In many cases, according to Cumberland, teachers had to look at data on nights and weekends to make sure students were not falling through the cracks.
“With the half-days, it was usually training. They did their training, and then they went home,” he said. “Now we can have the training plus a half a day of data analysis.”
Cumberland compares data analysis for educators to a doctor looking at symptoms and assessing patients. The doctor has to analyze results to figure out how best to treat the patient, he said, and teachers go through a similar process.
“We collect a lot of data on our students. Now we need to take the time to look at that data, analyze that data, and then we can become prescriptive, student to student — personalized learning,” Cumberland said. “The student is going to get what they need, and the teacher is going to be able to see what is working and what isn’t.”
The new calendar will help parents, as well, he said.
“I’ve been told that it’s been a struggle for some of our parents to deal with those half-days,” Cumberland said. “Kids come to school and parents work, and then to arrange for half-days of sitting is much more difficult than getting a full-day (sitter).”
The additional days off will also help as makeup days if the district has to close school too often because of bad weather, Cumberland said. The new calendar has three weather days, the same as the current school year.
The 2015-16 school year will begin Sept. 1 and end June 3.