By Anonymous
Filed Wednesday, February 15 at 9:59 PM
by Katie Wessling and two other members of St. Louis Parents for Kids
Board Statement for Feb. 14th
Thank you for hearing our concerns this evening. Many parents from a number of schools are concerned with the extension of the Elementary School day. We have concerns about how this decision would affect student academics, quality of life and safety. We have come here tonight to share our concerns and the concerns of the parents who signed the provided petitions.
Studies have shown that children are more alert in the morning. Right now the elementary students at every magnet school except Simmons/Marshall are starting after 9 am and aren’t leaving school until after 4. This gives the teachers little of that precious morning time when the students are alert and ready to focus, and instead puts the bulk of the day in the afternoon, when the students are wearing down and are no longer as attentive as they could be. This affects homework as well; we believe homework would be completed more efficiently if students had more time in the evening hours and the evening wasn’t a pressure cooker of: get home, eat dinner, do homework, take a bath, go to bed.
Now that the school year starts in August, in the late summer the non air-conditioned buildings will be cooler in the morning. Our children cannot learn effectively in a brick oven of a school building at 3 o’clock on an August afternoon. Even in an airconditioned building, the lethargy of a hot summer afternoon in St. Louis is not optimal learning time for our little ones.
We have included in the packet we have provided to you the schedules of the Rockwood, Parkway, and Pattonville School Districts. The longest school day was 7 hours. No school let out later than 3:52. We contacted the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to find out what the recommended elementary school day length was and they say that 1800 minutes of instruction time each week for children in primary school is recommended. This breaks down to a 360 minute instructional time per day recommendation. The DESE recommendations are included for your convenience. St. Louis public schools already exceed these recommendations; our children are in school 420 minutes a day, even allowing 60 minutes for lunch and recess, which is not likely, we have 360 minutes for instruction. We want our students to be well educated, but not at the expense of their childhood; which leads us to our next concern—quality of life.
We feel that there should be a fair balance between school life and home for our children. If the day is extended further into the afternoon, there are several reasons why this could adversely affect their quality of life. We’ve already mentioned the time crunch in the evening. Many of our children are not able to be picked up right after school, so those riding the bus get home even later than the others do. Their time crunch is even worse.
Additionally, some of our children have times they must eat for health reasons, such as diabetes and acid reflux. It is much easier for a parent to adjust breakfast time than it is to readjust dinner and, accordingly, bedtime, to follow the guidelines their health care providers have set forth for them.
A child’s quality of life also includes taking part in community activities. We have one of the top public libraries in the nation here in St. Louis, and our children cannot participate in the after school programs offered by the library because they get out of school too late. These programs begin at 3:30. The activities of our public library should not be accessible only by children who attend private school. Go to one of these programs sometime and note how many Catholic school uniforms you see, and then try to find a child from a public school. The activities of the South City Art Studio in Tower Grove Park start at 4—we can’t do those either. Those are just two examples. We encourage our children to be involved in our community, but many of us can’t find time.
Adding minutes to the end of our school day will result in the loss of what is already precious little time for children and their families to spend together. We are not talking about time for homework, dinner, baths and bedtime routines, but rather "down time" where kids and their parents and siblings can play a game, read a book, or simply have a conversation together after work and school are done. Fifteen minutes of this time were already taken from us this year; the proposed plan to take more time over the next two years makes a big difference in our family life. It is important to us as parents, and it should be a high priority for this Board, that we get as much time with our children as we can, given our overscheduled and busy lives. Putting minutes on at the end of the school day makes it that much harder. Conversely, I know of no parent who feels that time in the morning is a good opportunity to spend quality time with their kids; it’s usually chaotic. If minutes MUST be added on, and we don’t think they should, it is in the best interest of families to make the day start earlier rather than end later.
Another concern we have is the amount of time in these long school days our children spend sitting. Then there’s more sitting time on the bus. We have a rapidly increasing childhood obesity rate in this country. With that comes higher rates of juvenile diabetes, heart problems, and compromised health. Our children should be out playing after school while it is still daylight, not spending more and more time sitting. Dr. Williams saw a problem with the nutrition our children get at school, but the other half of the equation is the physical exercise they need. Some schools are squeezing out recess altogether in an attempt to cram in more and more instructional time. Children who have time to run and play and be healthy will be better learners, and probably will learn in less time than if they are sluggish from lack of activity.
And finally, as important as all these other concerns are, the safety of our small children is the most important of all. If this school day is extended any longer, think how late it will be before our children get home. A child who gets on a bus at 4:08 when school lets out may not get home until 5 or after. Our principal tells us she has gotten calls from parents as late as 5:30 or 6 asking where their children are because the bus isn’t there yet. Why these buses can’t get children home in an effective manner is a separate issue and you’ll be hearing from other parents about that later, but the fact remains that they don’t, and for much of the school year a child who gets off the bus between 5 and 6 is doing so in the dark. Not all of these children have a parent waiting at the bus stop for them. Lest we forget who we are talking about here, remember that some of these children are as young as 4 years old! If the school day is lengthened, these children won’t be getting home until even later, and that increases the number of days during the year when our children are getting off these busses in the dark. This is absolutely unacceptable to us as parents.
Even if it isn’t our child getting off at a dark bus stop, we care that any child would be required to do so. A child was hit by a car last week getting off the bus in the daylight. It is even easier for a child to be hit by a car in the dark. It is easier for a child to be abducted in the dark. It is easier for a child to get lost in the dark, for that matter, if he or she is small.
So, in addition to the need for family and childhood time, in addition to the fact that these children will be too tired by 4:30 in the afternoon to be absorbing useful information, the idea that our small children will be coming home in the dark makes the plan to add more minutes to the school day completely unacceptable to us as parents. With all these reasons why extending the school day is not a good idea, it is clear to us that the only reason it would be done is because of fighting between the Board and the teacher’s union during the last contract negotiations. The teachers agreed to work more hours for higher wages. This was termed a "win win" situation by the Board, but the losers were our children. We hear over and over again that parental input is desired, but we were not consulted before this decision was made, and parenst certainly aren’t parties to teacher contract negotiations. We have no choice but to make our voices heard here tonight. I wrote a letter to Dr. Williams last month asking him what was going to happen regarding extending the school day, and got no response. We expect a response after this, and we expect the best interests of our children to override all others.
1 Comments:
I TOTALLY AGREE WITH THIS PARENT.I TOO HAVE CONCERNS WITH THE SCHOOL DAY BEING DRAWN OUT FOR THE SAME REASONS. THE KIDS HAVE ENOUGH ON THEIR PLATES AS WELL AS PARENTS TRIENG TO HAVE SOME KIND OF FAMILY LIFE IN THE EVENINGS.I THINK IF WE FOCUSED MORE ON THE VALUE OF TIME IN THE CLASSROOM AS OPPOSED TO QUANTITY OF TIME, THE STUDENTS WILL DEFINITELY EXCEED MORE. I FEEL IT'S UNFAIR TO THE STAFF AS WELL,WHOM HAVE FAMILIES OF THEIR OWN WHO NEED ATTENTION AS WELL.I THANK YOU AND HOPE THESE CONCERNS ARE LISTENED TO AND TAKING INTO CONCEDERATION.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006 10:54:00 AM
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