Below the Minimums
As was reported in a previous post, the D11 administration and school board received a spanking from the DAAC for not informing the DAAC that the district school calendar was changing due to weather related closures. The rebuke stated that there is supposed to be a 30 day notice before a calendar change takes effect. Just so it is clear, this 30 day requirement is not a policy, and it is not a courtesy that is to be extended if the administration or board wants to extend it. In fact, this 30 day requirement is state law.
Colorado Revised Statute (CRS) 22-32-109 1. n. (II) B. states: "Any change in the calendar, excluding changes resulting from emergency closings or other unforeseen circumstances, shall be preceded by adequate and timely notice from the board, district administration, or school administration of not less than thirty days." To be clear, "emergency closings or other unforeseen circumstances" refers to such things as weather delays or closures, but it clearly means that no 30 day notice is required when the superintendent calls for a closure or delay when he wakes up and finds the city covered in deep snow. A 30 day notice is obviously impossible for those circumstances. On the other hand, the district calendar is adopted by the board during the previous school year. Additional days are already built into the calendar during this adoption process for such things as closures and delays. For the district to change the calendar as it did, the district MUST give a 30 day notice. D11 violated state statute by announcing on January 23rd that the school day would be extended by 30 minutes beginning January 29th, which appears to be slightly less than 30 days. Who knows; maybe district math chair Dora Gonzales did the math for the administration and estimated that six days was close to 30.
I am not commenting one way or the other on the benefits of extending the school day by 30 minutes. I am commenting on the fact that the D11 administration violated state law by making this change with no input from the community. In fact, according to the D11 press release, this change was made at the instruction of the labor union, a private organization that is not mentioned anywhere in state statute as an authority to change the district calendar. The D11 press release was as follows:
January 23, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Elaine Naleski, 520-2005
School District 11 Will Add Minutes to the School Day
Colorado Springs School District 11 announces that beginning on Monday, January 29, 2007, all District 11 schools will be starting school 15 minutes earlier than currently scheduled. In addition, all schools will dismiss 15 minutes later than currently scheduled. School District 11 is committed to ensuring student success and increasing student achievement. In an effort to be proactive in case students miss additional days of instructional time, District 11 staff, the Colorado Springs Education Association and the Educational Support Professionals Council worked collaboratively to arrive at a decision to increase student contact time by adding a total of 30 minutes to the school day.
Even the school board was left out of the loop on this decision. Sadly, the labor union and administration understand all too well that none of the lackeys on the current board will say or do anything about this legal violation. These hapless souls take their marching orders from both the labor union and administration anyway, so they would not even understand how they fit into the picture. (The exception, of course, is Willie Breazell). At a local gathering where several parents and a D11 teacher were present, the D11 teacher (who is a labor union activist) stated that parents should not have had a say in the calendar change since "parents do not have a vested interest in the calendar" like teachers do. Got it? Parents do not have a vested interest in the district for which they pay.
D11 has a history of striving to miss the standards of achievement in many areas. The calendar itself was in violation of state law until we on the reform slate corrected the situation. State law mandates that all school districts plan for 1080 teacher-pupil contact hours each school year for high school and middle school students. Districts must plan for no less than 990 hours per year for elementary students. According to statute, the ACTUAL number of teacher-pupil contact hours may be reduced to no less than 1056 hours at the secondary level, and no less than 968 hours for the elementary level for "parent-teacher conferences, staff in-service programs, and closing deemed by the board to be necessary for the health, safety, or welfare of students." (CRS 22-32-109 1.n. (II)A). Clearly, according to statue, the district MUST plan for 1080 contact hours at the secondary level, and these hours may be reduced to no fewer than 1056 hours for the listed reasons. When I was seated in 2003, the district calendar showed a total of 170 teacher-pupil contact days. What it did not mention was that 2 of those days were parent-teacher conference days. Students were scheduled to attend class for only 168 days. At the middle school level, the school day runs from 8:45AM through 3:40PM, with a 30 minute lunch. The lunch period may not be counted as teacher-pupil contact time, according to statute, but the district does count the time between classes (passing time) as teacher-pupil contact time, believe it or not. This means that middle school students receive 385 minutes of teacher-pupil contact time during each school day. Multiply this by the 168 contact days in 2003 (then divide by 60 minutes to get hours), and you will find that D11 only planned for 1078 teacher-pupil contact hours for the middle schools in 2003 and years prior. To cover for this, the board and administration used parent-teacher conference days to reach the 1080 mark. In other words, they took the clear wording of state statute and turned it on its head. Statute clearly does not allow a district to use parent-teacher conference days to meet a planning minimum any more than it allows snow days to be used for this purpose. Districts may REDUCE planned hours by hours used for parent-teacher conferences, but it may not ADD days used for parent-teacher conferences to reach planning minimums.
I brought this issue up each time the board dealt with the district calendar. Connie Stanton was a district executive director who was in charge of calendar issues. Mary Thurman was her supervisor. Stanton would always argue that parent teacher conferences were allowed to count as contact days. Even when I would read the statute to her, she pretended as if she could not understand what I was saying. This violation of state law occurred because the labor union would not accept any additional days in the contract. The labor union leader at the time was Mike Coughlin. During the discussion of this issue at a public board meeting, Coughlin said that parents should bring their kids to the parent-teacher conferences if they were worried about getting their kids extra contact time. Leave it to the labor union leadership to care so much about kids. The current district calendar has 170 contact days, although the administration still shows 172 days, pretending that parent-teacher conferences are contact days. For the record, neither the labor union nor any other private entity need be consulted for permission before the school board sets the district calendar. In plain English, statute says that one of the duties of the board is, "To determine, prior to the end of a school year, the length of time which the schools of the distrct shall be in session during the next following school year..." Notice that no negotiations or permission is required from anyone.
Since the high schools have slightly longer school days than the middle schools, they always met the planning hour requirement, but they also had to count passing time to meet the minimums. The elementary schools also met the minimums, although recess is counted as teacher-pupil contact time. If recess and the time between classes were not counted as teacher-pupil contact time, then prior to 2003, the actual planned teacher-pupil contact times were 980 hours in the elementary schools and 994 hours in the middle schools. As I said, law allows recess and passing time to count, but many districts do not count this time, for obvious reasons,. The most obvious reason, of course, is because everyone knows that these periods of time ARE NOT teacher-pupil contact time.
This statute violation occurred during the board service of Lyman Kaiser, Karen Teja, Bruce Doyle, Mary Wierman, Dave Linebaugh, Waynette Rand,and Delia Busby. Anyone who knows Kaiser understands that he is a stickler for detail. He knew very well that his calendars were not within state statute standards, yet he was afraid to challenge the labor union. He and Doyle most certainly turned a blind eye to this violation of statute. The others on the board were usually so out of touch that they probably had no idea what they were voting on in the first place.
If you are a parent whose child or children attended a D11 middle school prior to 2004, and if you feel as if your child was short-changed during his/her middle school years, you are literally correct. D11 did not plan for the state mandated minimum contact hours for middle schoolers, even when it tried to use trickery to get there.
Colorado Revised Statute (CRS) 22-32-109 1. n. (II) B. states: "Any change in the calendar, excluding changes resulting from emergency closings or other unforeseen circumstances, shall be preceded by adequate and timely notice from the board, district administration, or school administration of not less than thirty days." To be clear, "emergency closings or other unforeseen circumstances" refers to such things as weather delays or closures, but it clearly means that no 30 day notice is required when the superintendent calls for a closure or delay when he wakes up and finds the city covered in deep snow. A 30 day notice is obviously impossible for those circumstances. On the other hand, the district calendar is adopted by the board during the previous school year. Additional days are already built into the calendar during this adoption process for such things as closures and delays. For the district to change the calendar as it did, the district MUST give a 30 day notice. D11 violated state statute by announcing on January 23rd that the school day would be extended by 30 minutes beginning January 29th, which appears to be slightly less than 30 days. Who knows; maybe district math chair Dora Gonzales did the math for the administration and estimated that six days was close to 30.
I am not commenting one way or the other on the benefits of extending the school day by 30 minutes. I am commenting on the fact that the D11 administration violated state law by making this change with no input from the community. In fact, according to the D11 press release, this change was made at the instruction of the labor union, a private organization that is not mentioned anywhere in state statute as an authority to change the district calendar. The D11 press release was as follows:
January 23, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Elaine Naleski, 520-2005
School District 11 Will Add Minutes to the School Day
Colorado Springs School District 11 announces that beginning on Monday, January 29, 2007, all District 11 schools will be starting school 15 minutes earlier than currently scheduled. In addition, all schools will dismiss 15 minutes later than currently scheduled. School District 11 is committed to ensuring student success and increasing student achievement. In an effort to be proactive in case students miss additional days of instructional time, District 11 staff, the Colorado Springs Education Association and the Educational Support Professionals Council worked collaboratively to arrive at a decision to increase student contact time by adding a total of 30 minutes to the school day.
Even the school board was left out of the loop on this decision. Sadly, the labor union and administration understand all too well that none of the lackeys on the current board will say or do anything about this legal violation. These hapless souls take their marching orders from both the labor union and administration anyway, so they would not even understand how they fit into the picture. (The exception, of course, is Willie Breazell). At a local gathering where several parents and a D11 teacher were present, the D11 teacher (who is a labor union activist) stated that parents should not have had a say in the calendar change since "parents do not have a vested interest in the calendar" like teachers do. Got it? Parents do not have a vested interest in the district for which they pay.
D11 has a history of striving to miss the standards of achievement in many areas. The calendar itself was in violation of state law until we on the reform slate corrected the situation. State law mandates that all school districts plan for 1080 teacher-pupil contact hours each school year for high school and middle school students. Districts must plan for no less than 990 hours per year for elementary students. According to statute, the ACTUAL number of teacher-pupil contact hours may be reduced to no less than 1056 hours at the secondary level, and no less than 968 hours for the elementary level for "parent-teacher conferences, staff in-service programs, and closing deemed by the board to be necessary for the health, safety, or welfare of students." (CRS 22-32-109 1.n. (II)A). Clearly, according to statue, the district MUST plan for 1080 contact hours at the secondary level, and these hours may be reduced to no fewer than 1056 hours for the listed reasons. When I was seated in 2003, the district calendar showed a total of 170 teacher-pupil contact days. What it did not mention was that 2 of those days were parent-teacher conference days. Students were scheduled to attend class for only 168 days. At the middle school level, the school day runs from 8:45AM through 3:40PM, with a 30 minute lunch. The lunch period may not be counted as teacher-pupil contact time, according to statute, but the district does count the time between classes (passing time) as teacher-pupil contact time, believe it or not. This means that middle school students receive 385 minutes of teacher-pupil contact time during each school day. Multiply this by the 168 contact days in 2003 (then divide by 60 minutes to get hours), and you will find that D11 only planned for 1078 teacher-pupil contact hours for the middle schools in 2003 and years prior. To cover for this, the board and administration used parent-teacher conference days to reach the 1080 mark. In other words, they took the clear wording of state statute and turned it on its head. Statute clearly does not allow a district to use parent-teacher conference days to meet a planning minimum any more than it allows snow days to be used for this purpose. Districts may REDUCE planned hours by hours used for parent-teacher conferences, but it may not ADD days used for parent-teacher conferences to reach planning minimums.
I brought this issue up each time the board dealt with the district calendar. Connie Stanton was a district executive director who was in charge of calendar issues. Mary Thurman was her supervisor. Stanton would always argue that parent teacher conferences were allowed to count as contact days. Even when I would read the statute to her, she pretended as if she could not understand what I was saying. This violation of state law occurred because the labor union would not accept any additional days in the contract. The labor union leader at the time was Mike Coughlin. During the discussion of this issue at a public board meeting, Coughlin said that parents should bring their kids to the parent-teacher conferences if they were worried about getting their kids extra contact time. Leave it to the labor union leadership to care so much about kids. The current district calendar has 170 contact days, although the administration still shows 172 days, pretending that parent-teacher conferences are contact days. For the record, neither the labor union nor any other private entity need be consulted for permission before the school board sets the district calendar. In plain English, statute says that one of the duties of the board is, "To determine, prior to the end of a school year, the length of time which the schools of the distrct shall be in session during the next following school year..." Notice that no negotiations or permission is required from anyone.
Since the high schools have slightly longer school days than the middle schools, they always met the planning hour requirement, but they also had to count passing time to meet the minimums. The elementary schools also met the minimums, although recess is counted as teacher-pupil contact time. If recess and the time between classes were not counted as teacher-pupil contact time, then prior to 2003, the actual planned teacher-pupil contact times were 980 hours in the elementary schools and 994 hours in the middle schools. As I said, law allows recess and passing time to count, but many districts do not count this time, for obvious reasons,. The most obvious reason, of course, is because everyone knows that these periods of time ARE NOT teacher-pupil contact time.
This statute violation occurred during the board service of Lyman Kaiser, Karen Teja, Bruce Doyle, Mary Wierman, Dave Linebaugh, Waynette Rand,and Delia Busby. Anyone who knows Kaiser understands that he is a stickler for detail. He knew very well that his calendars were not within state statute standards, yet he was afraid to challenge the labor union. He and Doyle most certainly turned a blind eye to this violation of statute. The others on the board were usually so out of touch that they probably had no idea what they were voting on in the first place.
If you are a parent whose child or children attended a D11 middle school prior to 2004, and if you feel as if your child was short-changed during his/her middle school years, you are literally correct. D11 did not plan for the state mandated minimum contact hours for middle schoolers, even when it tried to use trickery to get there.
posted by Craig Cox | 6:35 PM
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