How many Wake County schools need to change their bell schedules this fall to meet the new state requirement for 1,025 hours of instruction?
Deputy Superintendent Cathy Moore told the school board's student achievement committee last week that they're still gathering data from individual schools. The schools are checking their schedules to see how many hours they currently have.
Wake is going with 1,025 hours instead of 185 days for the 2013-14 school year after the General Assembly said districts could use either option. It used to be 180 days and 1,000 hours.
Wake needs to know before the bell schedules are adopted by the school board in March. Any schools that are short will need to tack on some additional time to their school day.
Comments
Found it
Fri, 01/18/2013 - 16:32 — louiselee44The blog post I was asking about (adding 10 minutes to each day) was in August.
Still waiting...
Fri, 01/18/2013 - 13:57 — louiselee44The reason Wake "has" to go with the 1,025 hour option is because of year-round schools, I've been told.
Keung, when was it that you first posted (or either the N&O printed an article) about the decision to add additional hours to conform to the law's changes? It's been months. That was when I first contacted WCPSS to let them know that they first need data on how many instructional hours students are already getting before just jumping to the conclusion that more hours are needed.
There are several variables, the main one being, "What qualifies as 'instructional hours'"? Time between classes has to be taken out (ridiculous, in my opinion) and lunch; PE qualifies of course, but "recess" is sometimes counted and sometimes not. Anyway, I'm staying in touch with Ms. Moore regarding this information.
Yeah
Fri, 01/18/2013 - 18:18 — Bob_SconceIf you do the math, you find that year-round schools operate 48 weeks a year-- the other 4 weeks are used for things like MLK day, Veterans Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc...
Adding another 5 days means that year-round schools have to operate for a little over 49 weeks a year, and that starts squeezing places you can't easily squeeze.
That's why when the staff originally put together 185-day YR calendars, there were several days were all 4 tracks were technically in session. (What a nightmare that would have been.)
Really good points.....
Fri, 01/18/2013 - 17:08 — mariareierI never thought about that, I just assumed they counted from start bell to end bell. Do you know if they count the 20 minutes before the bell rings at the end of the day? In our elementary school that is spent waiting in the hallway or classroom for your method of transportation and grade to be called so there's never instruction during that time.
I wonder if they will count early release days as just by the number of hours starting next year? I think in the past when they went by "days" they needed the kids to be in school on early release days for 4 hours in order for it to count as a full school day.
I'm pretty sure...
Fri, 01/18/2013 - 20:28 — louiselee44that for the purpose of the 1,025 hour requirement, only specific academic hours are counted. Early release days cut down on the hour count since only those 4 hours would be included.