More districts are exploring extended school days and years

Several schools are experimenting with longer days and years so they can offer more remediation and enrichment opportunities, and many others would likely follow suit if they had enough resources.

When the James P. Timilty Middle School in the Roxbury section of Boston first extended its school day in the 1980s, it was one of the district’s lowest- performing middle schools; now it’s one of the highest performing, says Assistant Principal James D. Anderson.

The school, which enrolls about 690 students in grades 6-8, offers 80 to 90-minute classes in the core subjects and 50-minute classes for theater, art, and gym. The longer classes add up to “about 35 extra days of schooling each year,” says Anderson.

When the school lost funding for the extended-day program during a round of budget cuts, school officials felt so passionate about the longer school days, they raised private funds to continue them.

Now Timilty hopes to receive state funding to continue its extended-day program. In October, Boston was one of 16 school districts awarded a planning grant from the Massachusetts Department of Education to help extend the learning time in one or more schools by at least 30 percent.

According to Anderson, the longer school day costs about $600,000 a year. “If we’re not chosen for the expanded-day grant, we’ll have to do more fund-raising, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll have to go back to the regular, conventional day, but I don’t think our students will do as well,” he says.

“It all comes down to money, but it’s really not a lot of money if you look at the amount of students we’re serving. A private tutor would cost a lot more,” he says.

The Revere, Mass., school district extended the school year an additional 20 days into the summer last year for 130 third graders who were reading below grade level.

“Teachers felt it was highly effective,” says Superintendent Paul Dakin. “About 85 percent of the students reached or exceeded grade level for reading.”

Students were grouped according to their ability with six students per teacher, he says. The program ended at 12:45 p.m., but breakfast and lunch were included. Revere is an urban district with 58 percent of its students eligible for free or reduced-priced lunches.

“A lot of my kids don’t get the academic back-up from parents during the summer,” Dakin says. “To keep a gap from growing with kids who have college-educated parents and parents who continue the learning process, we must do something like extend the year, at least for these children.”

Surprisingly, there were very few complaints from students and parents about the extra 20 days of schooling, he says -- just logistical problems from people who had scheduled vacations.

The Sioux Falls, S.D., school district also tried extending the school year an extra month into the summer to raise student achievement. But the district dropped that schedule after a survey showed 83 percent of parents and 72 percent of employees preferred a longer day over a longer year, says Rich Meier, director of educational services.

The Sioux Falls school board voted to add 30 minutes to the school day at three elementary schools that failed to meet their adequate yearly progress (AYP) goals under the No Child Left Behind Act. The board approved $175,000 for extra pay for teachers on the extended-day schedule plus $9,000 in additional transportation costs.

All three of the schools made AYP, says Sharon Schueler, coordinator of assessment and evaluation. “That’s very significant to me.” The district is continuing the program this year.

Meier attributes the program’s success to “less transition” and “a focused instructional component geared to reading and vocabulary skills.”

In Springfield, Mo., Campbell Elementary School has had good results with a voluntary extended-day program. Twice a week, participating students stay for an extra hour, mainly for extra help with communications arts and mathematics.

“From the very get-go, kids wanted to stay. It’s hugely successful,” says Principal Tim Brown. “We just found that we could not teach all we needed to teach in the course of a school day. We had kids with special needs who need enrichment, extension, and acceleration. We couldn’t get it done in the six and three-quarter hours we had, not with all the other things we also teach.”

He notes that the school has a 131 percent mobility rate, and 87 percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. “Those factors alone mean we have to do some special things for some of our kids.”

At first, teachers volunteered to stay, he says. But then he was able to get funding from a comprehensive school improvement grant to pay three teachers $16 an hour. When that grant ended in 2004, the school board agreed to pick up the cost, which is about $2,000 a year.

“We don’t have buses so a lot of kids walk, and their parents are more than happy to have them stay here,” Brown says. About 80 to 90 percent of the students stay. “They like their teachers, and they like being here with their classmates.”

Brown says math scores have certainly come up, and “while we haven’t bumped any kids up to advanced or proficient in communications arts like we want to, those scores have improved, too.”

Brown gives all the credit to his regular teaching staff. The staff has to be willing to take on the extra work. “It doesn’t make sense to bring in someone who doesn’t know your kids.”

In Florida, the Volusia County school system started an extended-day program at Woodward Elementary School three years ago. Seven teachers volunteered to work an extra hour at their regular hourly pay rate, says Chris Colwell, deputy superintendent for instruction.

Today, the Plus One Program encompasses 157 teachers in eight schools, and Colwell expects it will be expanded next year.

There is a waiting list of schools that want to have an extended day, but the only obstacle is lack of funding. The program costs about $6,500 per teacher, or about $1.1 million.

“We learned that the kids have the learning endurance to hang in for the extra hour,” he says. “When I visit these schools between 2 and 3 p.m., I see kids hard at work. It looks like 10 a.m. Teachers say they are a little more tired, but less frustrated.” And parent surveys showed a 95 percent satisfaction rate.

Volusia County adopted the extended program because it was hard to pack the curriculum into the regular schedule, Colwell says. “The expectations have gone up, but the calendar still looks like 1950.”

“I think extended days are happening more and more, absolutely, because people need to come up with ways to increase learning time,” says Kathy Christie, a vice president with the Education Commission of the States.

“The expansion of the school calendar is a necessary component of the larger education reform agenda,” says Chris Gabrieli, chair of Massachusetts 2020, an organization that promotes expanded educational opportunities.

A report released by Massachusetts 2020 Nov. 10 found that an extended day not only allows more time in classrooms, it also enables schools to offer an array of enrichment activities and give teachers more time for planning and professional development.

“If we expect our children to learn more than previous generations, they must have more time in which to reach this goal,” Gabrieli wrote in a Boston Globe editorial.

Michael Kryzanek, professor of political science at Bridgewater (Mass.) State College, agrees a longer school day is needed, but says it will take a long time and predicts “a lot of blubbering and gnashing of teeth.”