Fulton students to get shorter school year but longer days

By Kristina Torres

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A sour economy and state budget cuts mean an increasing number of Georgia students will spend fewer days in class.

Fulton County school officials expect to approve a shortened school calendar Thursday, one that for the next two years at least will keep kids on campus for 177 days -- three fewer days than the state's standard 180-day school year.

The move will save Fulton $1.1 million, officials said. It will bring to at least three the number of Georgia systems cutting days out of the school year to help balance their books, and makes Georgia part of an emerging trend: Hawaii just cut 17 days from its school year for budget-cutting reasons, leaving it with a 163-day instructional calendar.

The financial effects of a shorter year are easy to measure, but the effect on students' performance is less clear. Research suggests that a few days may not make much of a difference but, in Georgia, one system has dropped more than a month. The cost-cutting also comes as schools face increased federal testing goals and calls and encouragement from experts nationally to re-examine school calendars and move in the opposite direction, pumping them up with longer school days, lengthening the school year and giving teachers significantly more time to plan lessons.

Georgia lawmakers this year gave school systems the option to shorten their 180-day calendars, as long as kids spent the same amount of time in instructions. For Fulton and other systems, that has meant plans to cut some school days and add 10 to 30 minutes to each day.

Fulton's plan, which will take effect in August with a few extra days of summer break, means its 88,000 students will spend an extra 10 minutes a day in school, spokeswoman Allison Toller said.  That adds up to 8.85 more hours of class a year than they get now -- which officials believe will keep the state's fourth-largest school system on track academically. This year, 95 percent of schools systemwide met federal testing goals, including both its northern and southern sections. Although Fulton, like most, includes the entire county, it is intersected by the separate city of Atlanta school system.

"What is done with the time in the classroom has the most impact on learning," Toller said.

But JoBeth Allen, an education professor at the University of Georgia, said those extra minutes may not be equal for all students, especially those who are behind. She worked with two elementary schools in Clarke County that went to a 195-day school year with a shortened summer break but more time off during other parts of the year. Over those two years, the number of students meeting standards jumped 19 percentage points in reading and 15 in math.

"It's my personal feeling no one is going to learn anything extra by extending the school day by 10 minutes [unless] the instruction is dramatically different," Allen said.

President Barack Obama made headlines earlier this year when he said he believed American children spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage next to their worldwide counterparts. However, current research indicates it's not the time U.S. schoolchildren spend on core subjects like reading and mathematics that is so different as much as the quality of instruction.

In a white paper published recently by the National Academy of Education, several leading experts said an average 180-day school year is not by itself out of line. Instead, they said, the U.S. has fallen behind in critical areas  such as teacher planning and professional development. Compared to high-achieving nations where teachers may spend 15 to 25 hours a week working with student assessment data, curriculum and lessons, U.S. teachers typically spend three to five hours, they said.

So far, the Georgia systems that have plans to or already have shortened their school years are not offering dramatic changes to teacher training and development. But that was not their intent.

In rural North Georgia, Murray County officials in September began a 160-day school year they hope saves $124,000 this school year.

In middle Georgia, Peach County responded to a $720,000 cut in state funding with a four-day school week. The county's 4,000 students now attend class Tuesday through Friday. Spokeswoman Sara Mason said the system saved more than $11,000 in utilities for August and September. Teacher absences are down, saving $19,000 in substitute teaching costs. Because teachers are working 10-hour days in the shortened week, more are available to help students enrolled in after-school programs. "It is something we had to do financially," Mason said of what equates to a 147-day school year. "We are making this work."

Still, the idea is not appealing for every system. "Adding a few minutes to each day while reducing the total number of days would in effect reduce the amount of quality instructional time students receive," DeKalb County spokesman Dale Davis said of that system's plans to stick to 180 days.

There also has been some give and take in Fulton, where school board members have not yet discussed the permanence of a 177-day calendar beyond 2012. "There's concern about doing anything that might reduce the amount of time" kids are in school, said board member Linda Schultz, who opposed an initial proposal to go to 175 days . She called the 177-day plan a compromise.