Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Late starts, parent-teacher conferences still a hot topic

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Late starts and parent-teacher conferences continues to be a hot topic of discussion at Cascade School Board meetings. At the April 24 meeting, Superintendent Bill Motsenbocker reported on a recent staff survey regarding late starts.

“The survey we sent out to staff strongly suggested we increase the length of time, but not the number of days. There are people out there that would like to go to every Wednesday, so we are doing it consistently,” Motsenbocker said. “There is something to be said for that, but in my opinion, the ship has already left the port. I don’t think it would be wise to add those days back at this particular point. We don’t have to make decision tonight, but I think we should talk about going to 2-hour late starts.”

The decision made by the Teaching and Learning Council or TLC was that you do away with the two late starts in May because it conflicts with testing, Motsenbocker said. The TLC also suggested moving the late starts from 90 minutes to two hours.

As for the parent-teacher conferences, Motsenbocker said the fall conferences work very well. It’s traditional and people expect it, he said.

“The purposes of conferences needs to be to inform parents. That is the whole purpose. It is not have kids give their student led conferences. The parents and kids can do that at home,” Motsenbocker said. “We need to come up with a system to where parents get to talk with a child’s teacher. There are some schools in the spring where that particular scenario does not work for them. Primarily, it seems the older a student gets, the less a spring conference actually works for people.”

Motsenbocker said he’s asked the TLC to bring him a plan on how they’re going to utilize the spring conference days because there’s two in the fall and two in the spring. He wants to give the council the chance to say, bring the instructional days back.

He said they would continue to do conferences for students that need it, whether for graduation or something else.

“They would do the scheduling with the parents, potentially during the teacher’s planning time, before or after school,” Motsenbocker said. “Conferences would still occur, but we would have those instructional days back. It seemed to be this would be more at the secondary level. Osborn and PD like the system they are using now and would like to continue that. I think it is has been quite successful with those two buildings.”

Board member Brenda Biebesheimer asked if they would be polling the families too.

“The question that comes up. I don’t want to poll the families on whether they like late starts, because I think it is a big interruption in the week. It is really the only time we have to do that work mandated by the state. I don’t want to ask parents if it is okay that we do late starts, because I think most say it is an inconvenience, but we still have to do it,” Motsenbocker said. “If we did it after school, we would be required to pay the teachers different amounts to do that. We have to carve time out to do the work.”

Biebesheimer said she agreed with that, but just wanted to open the door to something different. Motsenbocker said he was willing to open the door on 90 minutes versus two hours for late starts.

“There are 28 school districts in our ESD. Of those, 11 do late starts and 10 do early releases. We are the only two, us and Cashmere, that do late start Wednesday. Everybody else does Monday. Why don’t we consider something different?,” Biebesheimer said. “It seems like a lot do Friday. Every school district I contacted on the west side do early release Friday.”

Biebesheimer said Motsenbocker mentioned that towns people might not like early release. She contacted a downtown merchant that kids frequent. Biebesheimer said that merchant did not think early release would affect his business at all.

It would be helpful to talk to schools that do early release or late start, Motsenbocker said.

“I know for me as a teacher, Friday you are pretty much done. If we had an early release the end of the day on Friday, I don’t know how productive our staff would be. It’s the end of a long week and we have to do this other type of thing,” Motsenbocker said.

Board member Kristen Wood said she would be interested to know who made the decision to release early at a school district, the parents? the teachers? Biebesheimer said one school did early release Wednesday, but the families wanted Friday. They determined it did not meet their goals and it remained on Wednesday.

“I would interested to talk to the schools and see what prompted their decision. We still have to decide what is best for our students and our school, not necessarily the popular vote. I don’t know the answer,” said Board President Carrie Sorensen. “We went through a pretty extensive gathering of information when we started the late start Wednesday. For us, the decision came about is what is best for the students and utilization of that time by staff and administrators to get the job done.”

Orondo, Omak, Mansfield, Tonasket, Waterville, Wilson Creek, Pateros and Okanogan do early release Monday, Biebesheimer said.

Motsenbocker said he would be happy to take some direction, do a survey, but he didn’t want to give families a choice if it has a negative affect on what they are trying to accomplish.

“Typically families are worried about what works with their schedule, because that is what they are supposed to do,” Motsenbocker said. “What we’re trying to do is find the scenario that would produce the best result in the work we’re trying to get done.”

Maybe a formal survey is not necessary, just gather information, like Brenda is doing, Wood said.

“Talk to parents. Then, come back as a board and discuss, based on the pros and cons from our staff and administrators. What are they and the community asking for?,” Wood said.

Sorensen said she would be interested in talking to schools that do early release Friday and late start Monday. Board member Jennifer Pickel said some school districts may not like what they are doing.

“They may not. It might have been driven by the parents and it wasn’t that effective. Or maybe they didn’t think it would work and it has been fabulous,” Sorensen said.

Motsenbocker said they could move to two hours on late starts or just keep doing what they’ve been doing.

“I don’t think that is necessarily the discussion. That was a pretty strong consensus, the two hours. Brenda is questioning.. are we on the correct time and day? From what I’m understanding, we are feeling that two hours twice a month,” Sorensen said.

In his old district, Motsenbocker said they had two hour late starts and two hour snow delays, so everyone always knew it was two hours.

“Here, we have 90 minutes late start and two hour late start for snow. We almost never do it (snow delay,) so it is not worth changing a policy,” Motsenbocker said.

Sorensen said she wants information on late start Monday, early release Monday, early release Friday, late start Wednesday and early release Wednesday.

Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.

 

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