If the General Assembly passes the bill theyre now voting on, will it mean we wont have to go on the Saturdays?
Probably not. The House added a sentence to the bill passed last week that essentially nullifies any advantage the legislation would have given us. The bill allows school boards to take up to three days out of the 180 days for students ONLY if they make up ALL the instructional hours – even those over and above the required 1,000 originally scheduled in the year. Our schools scheduled many hours over 1,000 at the beginning of the school year to ensure that emergencies or special enrichment events for students did not encroach upon their required instructional time. The new provision would actually require students to make up more time than they are already doing coming to school on Saturday. This leaves us with two options: 1) We can continue with the Saturday School plan and make up the time on the two Saturdays in 1/2 day (4 hour) increments for a total of 8 hours for students. 2) Or we can drop the two remaining Saturday Schools and lengthen every school day between now and the end
