Schools

Could Full-Day Mondays Return to Fairfax County Public Schools?

by Ethan Levine

Mondays in Fairfax County have long meant half days for elementary school students and their teachers — but the Fairfax County School Board is revisiting what the school week might look like, for students, parents and teachers, if that changes in the next few years.

Currently, students in kindergarten through sixth grade attend half-days on Mondays; the other half of the school day is reserved for teacher planning hours.

But some parents in the area — especially those that work — find the half-days on Mondays to be lost learning time, or an inconvenience.

"Over the years, many parents have indicated that the shortened Monday schedule creates a child care problem," Board member Jane Strauss (Dranesville District) said.

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So how does the School Board balance the desires of parents to make Mondays a full day with the need for teacher planning hours? The solution, as board members, teachers and parents have found with years’ worth of discussion, is not simple.

Shortened Mondays were established in Fairfax County in the 1970s with the goal of providing teachers needed planning time without increasing hours and, thus, labor costs, Strauss said.

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For years, teachers groups and unions have advocated for better focus on workload issues — among them,  increased state and local mandates, testing requirements, new software and online learning initiatives, and pay.

The issues, particularly time for planning, became a focal point of budget discussions this spring, as school board members wrestled teacher needs with increasing budget demands.

Board members tackled the topic again at a meeting last week.

While extending school hours Monday would give students more learning time – an idea backed by many parents, including the group FullSchoolDays.org — removing the planning time on Mondays would force the county to extend labor costs further or strike the hours altogether, Strauss said..

"If FCPS wishes to change Mondays to a six and a half hour day, there would be about a seven percent increase in teacher salary costs," Strauss said.

The last time the School Board attempted to extend Mondays to full days was in 1991; at that time the change would have cost the Board $15 million dollars.

It’s not clear how much it would cost today, but Strauss said switching now “would be a substantial cost in the millions, possibly tens of millions if all elementary schools were included,” Strauss said, a cost that must be considered alongside a $190 million budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2015.

"If the Tuesday through Friday schedule were shortened and the time added back to Monday, there might not be any cost. However elementary teachers would not get the block of planning time. Many teachers would likely have great concern about this. They already have an increased work load and struggle to complete the required planning and analysis within the current time structure,” Strauss said.

Teachers like Steven Greenburg, president of the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers, are concerned about potentially losing planning hours. He said any teacher’s greatest concern is the students, but cutting teacher planning hours could be detrimental to them, too. In Greenburg’s eyes, cutting planning time could reduce the quality of instruction if teachers don’t have the same amount of time to prepare as they do now.  

Greenburg proposed adding two hours to the school day on Mondays while cutting back a half hour of the day Tuesdays through Fridays. The plan would take the two-hour work period on Mondays and spread it out throughout the rest of the week, Greenburg said; all five school days would be of equal length, which would also make child care easier to plan for working parents.

FCPS had tried this system in the past, but determined half-days on Mondays was a better choice, Greenburg said. But he thinks with modern technology, the county would not face some of the challenges it faced on its first attempt.

Teachers don’t just use their planning time to prep for classes, Greenburg said — they also use them to attend mandatory training programs throughout the year, some of which involve traveling to a different location. Giving teachers a half day to complete some of this training allowed more time for commuting, Greenburg said.

Offering a telecommute option for training would also allow the county to be more flexible with spreading out the planning time throughout the week, Greenburg said.

No decision has been made on the issue, and the board is still trying to find a solution that can benefit parents, teachers and students, Strauss said.

Because the school system is also considering pushing back school start times by an hour for middle and high school students, Greenburg said he didn’t think the issue of extending Mondays to full days for elementary students would be fully addressed in the short-term — though discussion is always good, he said.

"I would assume that the discussion about more time in school for students will continue," Strauss said. "More instructional time would be valuable, especially for our neediest students. But more time will cost more money."

Do you support the switch to full day Mondays? At what cost? Tell us in the comments

Erica R. Hendry contributed reporting to this story.


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