The Extended Day Quandry

This is an exciting time for my family. Not only are we expecting a baby this spring but my son is entering kindergarten in September. Unlike when I was a kid and I entered kindergarten at the school closest to my home, we have choices of where to enroll Max. I received a packet of information in the mail inviting my husband and I to an open house where we could meet with the principals from the six different elementary schools in the city. From there, we would choose our top three favorite schools, and would be assigned to one of them.

All of the schools have something distinct to offer but we have narrowed it down to three. Two offer programs that are based in language and science. Our top choice however, is a school that runs a “full day” program and practices a Montessori type of mission. This means that the hours of the school day are extended, the school year is longer by 10 days and the kids learn in mixed age groups according to skill level. For a parent who works 45 minutes from home and who will have to contend with pick-up of an infant as well as for my five year old, the extended day program certainly meets my needs. Additionally, the group Mass 2020 has done research on extended day school and has found that:

• A longer school day provides an opportunity for longer classes, particularly in coreacademic subjects, which allows students more time to practice and master key
• Additional time can offer teachers extra periods for planning and professionaldevelopment, both essential for enhancing teacher quality.
• An extended schedule can enable schools to offer valuable enrichment activities suchas art, drama, music, physical education, and languages, which broaden and enrichlearning and engage students more deeply in school.
• The extra hours make it possible for schools to allocate time for one-on-one orsmall group tutoring sessions to address specific student learning needs.

Beyond the seeming practicality of the extended day, I support the notion of shorter but more frequent vacations peppered throughout the school year. Not only do I think this will be better for my son so that he doesn’t lose his focus over the long summer vacation, but he remains fresh and ready to learn with regular periods of break. I also like the school because it offers learning at various rates and levels. It could give Max the opportunity to work with both older and younger students, both teaching and learning with them.

It is because of all these benefits that there is a waiting list to get into the school. Admission is based on a number of factors such as whether a sibling already attends the school, racial balance, proximity to school and a lottery. Last year they only had 20 slots available through the lottery system and over 300 families interested in enrolling their child their. This raises the question of why, if so many families believe the extended day program to be most conducive to a good educational experience, there aren’t more extended day programs offered at other schools. The answer is that, an extended day means that teachers are working longer hours. Longer hours means more pay and, in the case of my district extended hours at the regular base rate of pay.

In doing some research on extended day, I found that in other districts, teachers were asked to work at their regular rate of pay for six hours and at 60% for the remaining 2-3. This hardly seems fair and it hardly seems a value I’d like to share with my son. I don’t believe that it’s ok to ask someone to work without paying them for the time they spend. Teachers have families, bills and lives that require their time and their money –not to mention the fact that if these educators have children in another district, they may have to pay for after-school care to make up for the extra time away from home. The community suffers when its educators are mistreated. Let’s not forget that teachers are members of the community.

So what works then? Should a district offer an extended day curriculum if it can only pay its teachers at a rate of 60% of their normal pay? Or should the district incorporate extended day into only the number of schools that it can afford to pay the teachers fairly?