Late starts continue to be a hot topic at Cascade School Board meetings. Currently, the school district has late starts for 90 minutes on the first two Wednesdays of the month. Board members have been discussing possible changes over the course of the past three school board meetings.
Board member Brenda Biebesheimer has pushed for consideration of early release. Since the last meeting, Superintendent Bill Motsenbocker and Executive Assistant Julie Winters have done more extensive research on this. At the May 9 meeting, Motsenbocker said they surveyed schools within the Educational Service District.
“Fairly evenly split between late starts and early releases. They range anywhere from one to two hours. We found they all avoid Tuesdays and Thursdays because those are sports days. Monday is a pretty common one, Wednesday and Friday also showed up,” Motsenbocker said.
Important to the survey was finding out why school districts were doing early release or late start.
“We found it all depended on the community, whatever the community was willing to accept and whatever is easiest to them. Some felt the early release was more benefit to them, some felt the late start was better,” Motsenbocker said. “The one comment we did get, the concern with early release was the supervision of kids. Sometimes parents are not home. We usually don’t have that problem with the late start. Most of those kids are home and families make arrangements.”
Winters said she found some commonalities in her discussions with school officials.
“They all have things they have to get done with staff, whether it is evaluation of staff or the professional learning community work they have to do. They need time to do it within the day,” Winters said. “Is it a Monday, Wednesday, Friday. It didn’t really matter so much. It’s split between early releases and late start. They all range around 1.5 to 2 hours.”
A big game changer, she said, was the size of the district.
“Bigger districts did not have a lot of community input. They are usually union driven. The deciding factor is between administrators and staff, when they do it and how they do it,” Winters said. “They are typically every week, for the larger district like Wenatchee, Moses Lake, Eastmont.
For the smaller districts, sometimes Monday was their only open day. They didn’t pick it for any other reason than that.”
Winters said many school administrators said it was important to establish a day of the week, then stick with it.
“It messes up parents. Once you get a day, parents figure it out. They expect it. They work it in their schedule. The one thing you can alter is the length of time. That doesn’t seem to impact too much,” Winters said. “With the bigger districts, you’re just not going to please everybody. You’re going to get as many versions of how it should be as there are families.”
Board member Carrie Sorensen said this will be an action item next meeting. The board will decide whether they are going to change or keep it the same.
“From the leadership team, the recommendation is to stay with Wednesdays. We would like to extend that from 90 minutes to two hours. We would like to eliminate the two late starts in May, because they interfere with testing,” Motsenbocker said. “If you decided that is not something you want to move to, then we’ll just keep it the way it is. The survey with the staff is almost unanimous they would like an extra 30 minutes to get the work done.”
As the work is completed, Motsenbocker said they could consider scaling back. Most would agree, he said, there is a lot of work being accomplished.
“At one point, when principals were saying, I have a late start, what do I do? That was staff development driven. Now, the work is already there. They know how to do it. They just need time to do it,” Motsenbocker said. “We’re also still working on it, but we’re changing the start time at all our schools to 8 a.m. next year. This is going to increase our school day by a half-hour at PD, which is significant. PD is excited to have it.”
Biebesheimer said it was unfortunate the board is not exploring changing the day.
“I think our families are brighter than we’re giving them credit for, to be able to change. If it were a change in the middle of the year, that would be tough. But, first day of school, new year,” Biebesheimer said. The board can certainly discuss that option, Sorensen said, if the recommendation is voted down at the next board meeting.
“Then, absolutely that would be the next step. That is very possible. With five of us on the board, if three want to see that exploration, then absolutely,” Sorensen said.
Board member Kristen Wood said all the families she’s talked to loved Wednesdays. Motsenbocker said he would not be disappointed if the board decided on a different day.
“We had to bring something to you as a recommendation. Probably the only non-starter for us, we have to have the time. That is critical. We don’t have a large enough budget to pay teachers to do it after school. I think we’re using the time very well,” Motsenbocker said. “I would support any argument with the community they’re not getting anything done. That is not true. The amount of work is significant. It’s time well spent.”
School Conferences
The topic of school conferences has been popular one, as well. Since hearing from the school administrators, a solution seems to be at hand.
“We now know that everyone will be conferencing in the fall, just like they always have. Buildings are going to bring me their plans at the next TLC (Teaching and Learning Council) meeting, which is next month, on what they plan to do in the spring,” Motsenbocker said. “I’ve given them the option to have school, just like we talked about at the meeting. They feel as though they can do their conferences that are necessary during office hours, inviting parents in at a scheduled time. They don’t need to have those two full days. They want those instruction days back.”
This, however, will not be an action item at the next school board meeting.
“We’ll still use the waiver for those buildings that want to use the four days. The other buildings will use at least the two days. What I’m predicting is everyone has already said we need to conference in the fall. We’re good with that,” he said. “The two elementary buildings are going to want to conference in the spring. The high school is probably going to want those two instructional days back. The middle school, I’m not sure. I’m hearing sides of both.”
Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.
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