Thursday, July 26, 2007

Lancaster ISD stays in the maelstrom - thoughts on the ‘four-day’ school week

By Brian Allen of TODAY Newspapers

Lancaster TODAY

Lancaster TODAY is the premier source of community news for the Lancaster area

You can say a lot of things about Dr. Larry Lewis (and nearly all of them were said at the marathon meeting July 19) but you can't accuse him of avoiding controversy.

Lewis is an unabashed champion of great expectations when it comes to Lancaster's kids whether it's the International Baccalaureate Program or the much-maligned Summer Reading Program. Those are successes that have to be mentioned in giving a fair assessment of Lewis' term as superintendent.

His ambitions for educating students are nearly limitless. This is the same guy who was stepping up to help the students of Wilmer-Hutchins when other school district officials were stepping backwards.

Superintendent Dr. Larry Lewis.

So unlike a lot of Lewis' critics, I don't believe he's stashing away millions of dollars in his glove compartment or riding the district down the pathway to Wilmer-Hutchins-ness.

But I don't believe a hastily implemented four-day school week is the answer to Lancaster's difficulties either. I recently attended a Cedar Hill school board meeting where district staff said they were already getting calls about the school's dress code for the upcoming year (article available: here). The board decided they had to get some things out in the media post-haste to give parents time to shop for school clothes. That was a week ago, and even then they were concerned about giving parents enough time to prepare for changes.

I became a parent a year ago and I fully realize that any measure of control adults pretend to have where children are concerned is an illusion at best. But still, it's an illusion that helps us maintain our sanity when deadlines ranging from soccer practice to science fairs enter the picture.

Changes to the dress code are life-altering for parents and children but nowhere near the sea change that Lewis is proposing. This would be a bold move if it had been proposed near the end of the last school year. And it would probably draw every bit the ire of parents that it has currently. But at least the district could say it had given parents ample time to prepare for the changes.

Proposing a radical shift in schedule barely a month before school starts doesn't give parents time to make the proper accommodations. A coach attempting to change his football schedule at this point in the year would come under serious fire. We're talking about an entire school district.

A lot of eyes are already looking to Lancaster for all the wrong reasons. The naysayers are calling this a poorly-planned smokescreen to cover up the wrongdoing they're certain exists. Anything but unprecedented success will give them the ammo they need to make sure no bond package passes in Lancaster before current first graders graduate college. Lewis said he and district staff have researched this “to the hilt” for Lancaster's students. It's hard to research anything of this magnitude to the hilt in two weeks. Only a handful of districts have tried four-day school weeks and some of them have switched back, showing neither cost savings nor substantial academic improvements.

The superintendent made the analogy that if Dell found an innovation in computers but waited a year to implement it, Hewlett-Packard would have already beaten them to the punch. But I'm perfectly comfortable leaving my HP computer at home for 8-10 hours a day while I'm at work. It has yet to get into any trouble doing so. Not so much with elementary or middle-school age kids.

I'm cutting it off there because unlike many of the parents that attended the meeting, I don't believe pregnancy or crime rates will skyrocket on Fridays. Good kids tend to be good kids, even when they're not being watched. If this program is passed high school students, especially those in extracurricular activities, won't have time for frolicking anyway. I'm amazed at how a lot of these students juggle all the things they do in a five-day week and still have time for family and friends.

The bad apples who have earned such a bad reputation for all their peers will just debase the foundations of society on Saturday and Sunday. A large number of them take Friday or any other day they can get away with off now. It was refreshing to hear Lewis say that students at the alternative campus will still be on a five-day schedule no matter what.

Four-day school weeks may eventually prove to be the right idea for Lancaster, but right now it's a matter of too much, too soon.

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• Lancaster ISD

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