Retaining School Days

In Michigan, the law requiring 180 school days each school year for K-12 students was eliminated in August 2003.  In the spring of 2004, school districts across Michigan began eliminating days or weeks of school from their 2004-2005 calendar.  There is no evidence that less school days are good for the students of Michigan.  To the contrary, research shows that more school days are one of the most significant ways to improve education.

The law that eliminated this minimum requirement was Michigan Public Act 158 of 2003.  This act does say the following about instructional time:

    * Each district shall provide at least 1,098 hours of pupil instruction
    * The first 30 hours for which pupil instruction is not provided [due to dangerous weather or other conditions] shall be counted as hours of pupil instruction
    * A district may count up to 51 hours of professional development for teachers ... as hours of pupil instruction.

While a school is required to offer 1,098 hours of instructional time, 51 hours may actually be teacher professional development, and another 30 hours may be excused due to a danger of holding school.  This means that students are actually guaranteed only 1,017 hours of school.

Under this law, it would be possible to run a school district with an incredibly low number of days.  If a district held school for 8 hours per day, not counting non-instructional lunch time, it could schedule only 138 days. Six of these could be teacher professional development days.  This leaves 132 student days.  Cancellations due to weather could leave students with only about 127 school days.

One possible calendar of student days would have students starting on September 17 and ending March 31.  This would mean no school for students during April, May, June, July, August or the first half of September.  Another possible calendar would start students on October 4th and ending April 15th.  For the students, no school in half of April, May, June, July, August or September.  This is not a good school calendar for students.

A much better calendar would offer six instructional hours per day.  This would require 183 school days, if all 1,098 hours were reserved for student instruction.  This was the intention of the law that was increasing the required days by one day each year.  The same law was increasing instructional hours by six per year.  the school year by six hours per year.  Some school districts had 183-day calendars during the 2000-2001 school year.

In Michigan, post Labor Day school start dates have been major issues due Michigan's summer tourism industry.  Some in the industry lobby to keep the warm summer days of July and August free from school.  This also allows high school students work opportunities during the tourist season.  For the Grand Rapids area, days with an average temperature of 70 degrees or above fall from June 28th through August 14th.  While the last two weeks of August are not quite as warm, the lakes remain warm and help extend the tourist season to Labor Day.

There are several different arguments for decreasing student days.

    * Longer summers increase help businesses during the tourist season.
    * School should only be in session between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
    * Fewer days decreases bus transportation costs.
    * Fewer days can be used with teachers as an alternative to increasing salaries.
    * Fewer days saves daily costs such as heating/cooling and hourly employees.

None of these arguments relate to the purpose of schools.  Teaching students is the purpose of schools.  More school days equates to more learning.  Reducing school days logically means that students simply learn less.  At the same time, lengthening the school day is not helpful.  Elementary school students grades K-6 account for over half of all students.  These students learn best in the morning and start getting tired and fidgety in the early afternoon.  For some students in particular, the quality of learning drops dramatically during the 5th and 6th hour in school.

Reducing school days means less lessons can be taught.  A district that reduces school by five days from 183 to 178 needs to add only 10 minutes per day to keep the same amount of instructional time.  A very common division of these 10 minutes is by allocating them equally to each class period.  Teachers will rarely change their lessons to take this additional minute or two into account.  The most realistic use for this extra time would be allowing it for working on assignments.  In effect, the students would have about 10 minutes less of homework each day.  While there may be effective ways of utilizing 10 extra minutes per day, it would be surprising to see that time being used to teach more lessons.

The overall effect of five fewer days would be five fewer days of lessons.  A single day is very significant for both teachers and students.  This becomes readily apparent in high school when teaching more that one period of the same class.   When one class looses a period due to things like assemblies or weather conditions, the teacher and students are never able to recover that time.  The teacher has three choices in this situation, 1. allow the class to be a day behind the rest, 2. try to squeeze the lesson from the missed day into other days already packed with lessons, or 3. slow down the other classes to allow the class to catch up.  So either the one class learns less, they are rushed through the material or the entire group falls a day behind the original pace.

Loosing five days means an entire week of school is gone.  It is similar to having a student absent due to illness for a week of school.  If this student were never allowed to learn what they had missed, there would be huge amounts that they were simply behind the rest of the students.

Once a reduction is made in student days, it is difficult to add those days back.  If a district reduces their student calendar by five days permanently, that mean a student going through an entire school career from K-12 would have sixty-five less days of school.

This fall, Hastings will offer only 163 days.  Martin, Saugatuck, and Fennville will offer 164 days.  This is 16 or 17 days less than the traditional 180-day calendar.  Over a student’s career in school, they would have over 200 less school days.  This means these students could be up to a full year behind their peers in 180-day districts by the time of high school graduation.

Another problem in offering less school days is that the summer break would typically be longer.  The longer students are out of school for summer, the more they forget.  That much more much be retaught or reviewed once school starts just in order to get the students to where they were at the end of the previous school year.  In schools that do year round education by spreading their days more evenly through the school year, student require very little review after several shorter breaks.  Teachers could expect to spend more time reviewing which would take days away from an already shortened schedule.

An example calendar with 164 days starts on September 7th and ends on May 16th.  This is a month less school than a 183 day calendar.  Another way of putting it is that the students are out for summer a month early.  Students will forget more over the long summer.   The net effect to students in such a district would be much greater than just loosing three or four weeks of school.

It is worthwhile to note that rarely do school year calendars look precisely like this.  These calendars have all been set up to show a post Labor Day start with a two week winter break.  Often, teacher inservice days, parent teacher days, records days, and assorted days off litter the calendar.  Districts offering fewer days might be compelled to add in these non-student days to spread apart the starting and ending date.  These example calendars take those variables out to more clearly illustrate the reduction in student days.

The students impacted most severely by shorter school years would be not only the younger students, but also the students who struggle the most in school.  These students need more days to learn at a comfortable pace.  A district that attempted to squeeze material into fewer days would find these students struggling even more.  The list of students who could or should be retained would increase.  The number of students being referred for costly special education services would also increase.

Another issue with less student days is the burden on the parents.  Working parents of young children often have to make child care arrangements for summer and breaks.  This burden is often a financial one.  By offering 163 days, parents would need to come up with at least 17 more days of childcare.  Below is a diagram to illustrate the huge variation amount of days possible.  Another selection of calendars could show pre Memorial Day end dates.

Also at issue would be slightly older children who would simply be home alone during the day.  Some children left at home alone tend to get in trouble.  Adding days alone at home increases the trouble they might get in.  This could impact some families in a very negative way.

Some schools will offer a certain number of school days without noting how many of those are half days.  If half days are very well implemented, they might work out okay for teachers, students and families.  In many cases, it would be much better to offer full days of schools.  On June 21st, Thornapple Kellogg Schools eliminated seven half days for the students.  The contention was that half-days were disliked by both staff and families.  Rather than eliminating these half days, they could have been converted to full days.  This would have offered the students of Thornapple Kellogg 182 full days of school rather than only 174.

The elimination of school days in Michigan is becoming a crisis never before seen in public schooling.  Most states in the U.S.A. require 180 or more student days.  The states requiring the least school days are currently Missouri with 174 and North Dakota with 173.  There are several states requiring more than 180 days: Ohio requires 182, Hawaii requires 184, and Kansas requires 186.  While these numbers do change from year to year, they support the contention that there must be a minimum number of school days.

On the west side of Michigan, student days are being reduced drastically.  On June 18 and 21, 2004 data was collected for selected districts to the south of Grand Rapids.  Of the 20 districts, only four had finalized calendars offering an equivalent of 180 full student days.  About half of the districts had already cut out school days.

The extreme example is Hastings.  It offers only 163 student days, six of those being half days.  This leaves 157 days were the students are in session for the entire school day.  This is a reduction of 23 days, over a month of school, from a 180 full day calendar.  This is not good for the students, the parents, the community or the long term good of the school district.

Under the schools of choice law, it is possible that families would choose to send their students to a neighboring district.  Delton Kellogg to the south and Thornapple Kellogg to the north both will offer 174 full days.  That is 17 more full days of school.  In addition, Delton Kellogg offers all day everyday Kindergarten for all of its students.  In a time when schools are in competition with one another for students, reducing student days seems a sure way to loose good students.

There are two possible ways to address this epidemic of irresponsibility.  One choice is for school boards to resolve to always offer at least 180 full student days for all students.  Many boards under pressure from the budget and employees to offer less student days.  A greater pressure from families, community and teachers would be needed in every crisis district to hold off the slide toward fewer days.  Board of educations can be addressed directly during public comment or input time during regularly scheduled meetings.  The individual approach to discussion the issue with board members would also be crucial.  This effort would need to be made in over 500 school districts across the state where school calendars will be decided in the near future.

A better way to address the problem is for the Michigan legislature to pass a law that requires that all K-12 schools in Michigan offer at least 180 full days of school.  In order to do this; individuals and organizations would need to contact politicians in Lansing to express their desire that the law is drafted.  The counter arguments from Lansing would probably be that this is a local control issue and a recent elimination of a requirement that should be allowed to run its course.  This change in the law has already proved to be devastating for the students of Michigan.  Offering fewer days is not better for kids.  Less is simply less.

Local control is an argument that is often made when passing the buck on a controversial issue.  There are always limits to local control.  It is incredibly inefficient to have hundreds of local units of government including cities, townships, counties and school districts deal with issues that should be resolved at the state or national level.  This elimination of days crossed the line where local control was not the best option for the students of Michigan.

Another compelling argument against local control for minimum number of school days is that the Department of Education can still waive the requirement in emergency or experimental situations.  During the summer of 2003, both Hastings and Republic Michigamme had requested waivers to reduce student days.  Republic Michigamme was interested in holding school only four days per week from Tuesday to Friday.  Even with a law in place that requires 180 full school days for all students, districts could still apply for shorter calendars.

IN conclusion, school districts are eliminating student instructional days.  This is not in the best interest of families, students, teachers, community or Michigan.  Action must take place to guarantee that all K-12 students in Michigan are offered at least 180 full days of school.  Action at the school board level may be effective for a that single district if it is organized and applies significant pressure on the board of education.  Local action only improves things for students of that school district.  Maintaining a strong education system in Michigan is the best interest of everyone.  Action at the legislative level in Lansing to restore a 180-day law, if successful, would improve the education system across Michigan.