Quote:EVERETT, Wash. (AP) — Washington school superintendents are pushing for a shorter school year as a budget fix.
The Daily Herald reports (http://bit.ly/v8DFQr ) that in letters and meetings, educators are telling lawmakers that taking a week off the calendar spreads any budget cut more fairly than other money-saving proposals such as reducing state aid to rural or property-poor districts.
School leaders also contend that after three years of diluting programs as state dollars declined, going to a shorter year may stem any further erosion.
There's been talk about a shorter school year the past couple of legislative sessions.
Washington is not the first to consider this path. California, for example, dropped from 180 days to 175 days in 2009, then decided earlier this year to let financially challenged districts teach as few as 168 days.
Other states, such as Oregon, allowed districts to go to a four-day school week.
Read more:
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/WA-superintendents-push-for-shorter-school-year-2267228.php#ixzz1degagGKT
We are becoming incapable of charting a course and then sticking to it. For the last ten years the reformers have been pushing for longer school years(as well as longer school days) , so a lot of districts did it, now a few years later back we go the other way. We see this BS over and over again. A few years ago we at great expense and instituional challenge to the Army grew the force by 50,000....now we are dropping 50,000 with more probably to be announced at the end of the year. Nasa is going to send men to Mars till OOPS, now they are not. For three decades the plan was to dump nuclear power plant waste under Yucca mountain, $15 billion into the project we get told Ooops, changed our minds....and so the fecklessness goes.
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