A Longer School Year?
A reflection on what our schools actually need as RPS debates extending the student calendar.
The Richmond Educator received the following submission from Sara Franklin, which is the pen name of an RPS middle school teacher. This piece is an important contribution to an ongoing debate. We want to provide a platform for this teacher’s thoughts, and we welcome submissions from other perspectives. Please email richmondvcore@gmail.com if you’re interested in submitting.
For several months now, the Richmond Public Schools administration and School Board have raised the possibility of extending the student school year from 180 days to 200. While no formal presentation to the school board has been offered, staff at Huguenot and John Marshall High Schools have been informed that their schools are considering piloting the new calendar. This calendar would require staff and students to start a full month earlier than other RPS schools. This pilot program would last for three school years.
How any extended calendar might be implemented remains to be seen. At Huguenot High School, staff were asked to respond to the principal about their interest in the change. At Huguenot, the principal made it clear that he would support such a sweeping change if a strong majority of staff supported it. It is unclear if only academic staff were queried on the change or if non-academic support staff were included. Since there is no official voting or survey occurring, there is also no way to certify the will of the staff.
The incentives offered to staff to make this switch include an 11 month contract, additional pay for the contract hours to be worked, and an alleged $10,000 bonus. Whether that bonus is every year, split across the three years or only for the first year is not entirely clear. Either way, at Huguenot High School alone, a $10,000 bonus for all of its current staff just once would cost well over a million dollars. And of course there is also the cost of additional HVAC, nutrition and transportation costs that come with extending the school year by four weeks.
In an interview with Superintendent Kamras for Channel 8 News, the superintendent mentioned student mental health support being a reason for extending the year, saying schools needed “more time.” Nevermind that many schools struggle to meet the mental health needs of their students with the staff they do have. Already, students regularly encounter long waits for mental health services from outside providers.
What’s ironic about all of this is how much an extra million dollars could do for a school like Huguenot if it was actually used to address the most pertinent student needs. A million dollars could fund about ten more social workers or counselor positions, who could provide proactive and preventative support to allow students to grow and process stress and trauma. That funding could be used to significantly bolster existing partnerships for student mental health such as those with Child Savers and Richmond Behavioral Health Authority. As we’ve seen repeatedly, the RPS administration is presenting an unproven and potentially expensive solution to a problem that would clearly be more easily solved directly at its source with sufficient resources.
Instead of addressing systemic issues that affect our students’ ability to attend and learn in school, the administration would prefer to throw millions of dollars to lengthen the school year.
But what does the all-important data say? It’s worth noting that the effectiveness of extended school year programs is mixed. In one study of an extended year program in 2014-2015 in New Mexico for kindergarten to third graders, modest increases were seen in some areas such as vocabulary and reading. In contrast, students that spoke mainly Spanish at home “showed no statistical benefit from the extra time in class.” The outcome of this study speaks much more to how we teach than our students’ ability to learn. If students–particularly those that are learning a new language at school–are not receiving appropriate and high quality instruction by experienced teachers, it should be obvious that they are less likely to learn, even with a few extra weeks of school.
Considering the findings in this study, it’s worth asking what RPS is doing to support its new teaches and to retain its experienced ones? We find it strange that the RPS Teacher Retention Task Force, as mentioned by Superintendent Kamras at a Richmond School Board meeting in July 2022, has yet to materialize. All of this is particularly curious since the administration has stated that they have specific concern about the performance of our English Learner students, even making their support a specific budget priority at the last school board meeting, yet they are the very students that did not see any gains from a longer school year in New Mexico.