Clarity

I know that many of you saw the article in the Cheney Free Press relating to the waiver days that the district applied for. We've already used two LID/PDD days and moved the last day of school from June 13th to June 16th; pending OSPI approval, the other 5 days we missed will be waived. Hooray!

There is a piece of the article, though, that needs to be addressed:

Survey results showed respondents were more in favor of using both professional development days and extending attendance in June over a proposal to extend daily instruction time by a total of 30 minutes each day from March 1 through April 30 to make up instruction time. The proposal, according to officials “would send a strong message to our parents and community members of our commitment to protecting instructional time.”

When asked what their thoughts were on the proposal, some of the 89 respondents’ comments board president Julie Albright said she found troubling.

“Some of these answers disturb me, especially coming from some of our teachers. Like, ‘This is against our contract!’....It’s kind of disheartening,” Albright said.

Veltri clarified the proposal, had it been approved, wouldn’t have added to the required seven and half hours per day teachers are contractually expected to be at school. What would increase is instruction time with students, having students stay an extra 15 minutes before and after regular hours.

First, it needs to be understood that the extra 30 minutes a day wouldn't negate the need to make up days. There are dual requirements from the state for a certain number of school days AND a certain number of minutes; we have the minutes more than taken care of, but only with a waiver (like we have for the LID days) can days be skipped. The 30 minutes extra a day would have been just that--30 minutes extra--not a way to avoid the need to make up days.

Secondly, our position remains that the additional time would have been a violation of the contract. It may have been technically possible to operate within the strictest definition of the 7.5 hour work day, but there was no getting around line 11 on page 7:

Employees shall be in their building one-half hour prior to the start of school and shall remain one-half hour after the dismissal of school.

We could have ignored this clause, sure. That sets a dangerous precedent, though, that could have caused problems down the road. Plus, with our school day 20 minutes longer than other districts (like Spokane 81) we already give our kids a level of service that we can all be proud of.

Ryan Grant attended the school board meeting as the Association representative. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

--The MLEA Exec Board--