Just as education experts are encouraging more classroom time to improve student grades and test scores, many California districts are moving in the opposite direction by shortening their school year amid a sustained and draining budget crisis.
Of the state’s 30 largest school districts, 16 are reducing the number of days in the academic year, according to a survey by California Watch. The changes are expected to affect about 1.4 million students in these districts alone.
Educators believe a shrinking school year, in combination with other budget cutbacks, could depress hard-won academic gains in recent years. To many, it is a dramatic illustration of how the state’s budget crisis has begun to erode not just the fringes, but also the core of public education in California.
“This is a major setback,” said Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell. “We’re reducing opportunities for our students, which puts California students at a competitive disadvantage relative to other states.”
A little more than a decade ago, California increased the number of instructional days to 180, catching up with most other states. Two years ago, as the state’s economy deteriorated, the state gave districts permission to reduce the calendar to 175 days, but few exercised the option.
No longer. Facing crushing budget deficits, districts throughout the state will cut up to five days from the school calendar by granting teachers and other staff unpaid furlough days. Many also will eliminate days when students are not in the classroom that teachers traditionally have used for class preparation, staff training or parent conferences.
In Southern California, districts with a shorter year include Los Angeles Unified, by far the state’s largest with nearly 700,000 students, as well as San Diego, Long Beach, Montebello, Fontana, Capistrano, Anaheim, Corona-Norco, Riverside, Poway and Saddleback Valley.
In the Central Valley, districts like Modesto, as well as several smaller ones in Stanislaus County, also intend to trim their school year, as do Northern California districts such as San Jose, Fremont, San Francisco and Elk Grove near Sacramento.
Slipping further behind
The nation’s school year, with its lengthy summer vacation, already is viewed as an anachronism dating back to when children were needed to work on family farms.
California’s shorter school year will put the state even further behind numerous countries such as the Netherlands and Italy, each with 200 instructional days, South Korea with 220, and Switzerland with 228. Growing numbers of California students will find themselves in the company of those in Kentucky, Maine and Missouri, whose school years are 175 days.
California, which educates one in eight public school children in the United States, is one of the few states in which districts in significant numbers are shrinking their school year, said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy in Washington, D.C. Utah recently reduced its school year to 175 days, while Hawaii went down to 163 days last year. Hawaii plans to rebound to 180 days in 2011.
“California is the basket case of the country,” Jennings said. “Fiscally, it is in worse shape than any other state. This is not the first time that California is cutting back on education, but usually districts first cut back on maintenance, professional development, equipment, and try to protect the classroom.”
The move is accompanied by cutbacks in almost every other aspect of public education, including rolling back or eliminating the state’s program intended to keep class sizes in the early grades to just 20 students. Last fall, a survey by California Watch found that the majority of the state’s 30 largest districts were increasing class size in the K-3 grades, in some cases to as many as 30 students.
What makes the shorter year attractive to many districts is that it yields large savings. The state’s 30 largest districts are expected to save more than $200 million combined. In Los Angeles, for example, a shorter year will save $145 million. San Diego will save $20.9 million, and Long Beach, $12 million. Even smaller districts like Fremont – the state’s 27th largest – will cut $5.8 million by reducing the school year by three days.
In cutting the school year, however, California may be sacrificing a major source of revenue even while it attempts to trim its budget. The shorter school year could hurt the state when it comes to competing for education funds administered by the U.S. Department of Education.
To compete for the $3.5 billion school-improvement grant program offered by the Department of Education, districts must agree to implement four turnaround strategies for their lowest-performing schools. Two of them would require expanding the school day, week or year as schools increase instructional time for core academic subjects. (Courtesy of New America Media)
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