Big Sky Cairn

Public school teachers in Bridger, Montana, who work a brutal nine months every year, are about to be relieved from the oppressive weight of a five-day work-week.  That’s because Bridger has decided to follow in the footsteps of Victor and Alberton and institute a four-day school week.  It’s good to be a teacher these days - although one can understand why Montanans are so reluctant to pass mill-levies to increase funding public education.  From the article:

The school board in Alberton voted in March to adopt a four-day school week for the 2008-2009 school year. The district proposed the change as a way to cut $125,000 from its budget.

In 2006, Victor’s school board decided to shorten the school week to save taxpayer money — a plan that Superintendent Orville Getz said has worked “very well.”

“We saved money in several different areas,” he said, citing transportation, food and utility costs.

What a brilliant plan.  Of course, since the children will still be around to do expensive things like eating on that fifth day, the cost isn’t really being eliminated - it’s being shifted to the parents who now have to foot the bill for those extra meals and utilities.

Worse, since almost no other jobs out there operate on a four-day work week, parents will have to either reduce their hours (meaning less income) or hire a sitter or child-care service (meaning more expense) for their kids on that fifth day.  Of course, the Bridger school district is very sensitive to the needs of working parents:

Ballard said the decision was made last month so parents could adjust to the new schedule over the summer. The district will try to arrange professional development time for teachers so they can plan for the change.

Decisions like these really make private school options attractive for parents.  Too bad only the wealthy have that option because Democrats continually block school choice options that would give middle class and poor families the same options.

Could you save the thinking for the big boys, please? I know it’s important to work in the magic of private schools and vouchers in every education piece, because Rush says they’re the best, but do really think that there will be a huge market to build private schools in small towns like Bridger?

As for the four day work week, I assume that you are going to ask the Legislature to eliminate other working arrangements where workers have long days, but shorter weeks, too. After all, those inherently mean someone isn’t working hard enough, right?

Isn’t local control of schools a bedrock conservative principle? One would think that you would prefer schools taking this kind of initiative. But that would get in the way of reflexive hatred of public education, wouldn’t it?

Incidentally, look at the research comparing public and private schools sometime. You might be surprised.

I think you missed my point. While the school district thinks a four-day school week is a great way for them to save money, what they are actually doing is making life incredibly difficult for families with parents working two jobs to barely eke by. I’m not just inventing this, I have a friend who had kids in Victor and since they went to the four-day school week, she has had to cut back on her hours so that she can be home on the extra day off (she can’t afford to pay someone to watch the kids).

I’m not recommending that the state or federal government intervene, and maybe the parents in Bridger are overjoyed by this development. My guess is that they are not. I don’t hate public education, but it’s a damn shame when an administration makes a short-sighted policy change like this. The reason I mention private alternatives is that having such alternatives - for all students not just the affluent onces - would force a public school to consider the economic ramifications of their policies.

Wiley-

You think they’re “saving” that money? Where on earth would they be putting it? They’re cutting back because they have to. What suggestions would you have for them to meet their budget? Do you have any $125,000 ideas?

Schools in Montana are being forced to do this because they are drastically underfunded. Simple as that. Like I said, if you’ve got any other ideas (I’m sure more funding is NOT one of them) let me know.

And most big cities have private schools. Places like Bridger will never have them, vouchers or none.

Pogie -

You should probably stay away from trying to summarize conservative thought, it is not your strong point.

We are all about local control. No where in Cody’s post did he call for legislative action, that is you putting an assumption in there.

Local control does not mean support for boneheaded local decisions.

This decision in my mind is passing on hidden costs in addition to dubious education benefits. I would be interested in seeing anything out there showing that I am wrong in my guesses, but, wouldn’t the extended hours force students in extra-curricular to be out much later? I also doubt students will be as productive on Thursday’s in this plan as they were before.

I agree with Steve that funding is an issue, how about creating a dedicated funding stream at the state level…say through resource development?

Contempt for teachers is noted, and a larger contempt for education in general is a common subtext in conservative “thought”.

First you udner fund it, saying that taxes are evil, and then when they react only as they can, by cutting services, you claim some sort of mythical affiliation with ordinary working people, If you cared about them at all, you’d fund education.

But you don’t. Hypcrisy noted. Conservative bonehead “thought” 101. Screw the working stiff, blame the government.

No contempt for teachers - but contempt for a system that doesn’t consider or reward merit. All teachers are not created equal, and the current system provides incentive toward mediocrity and conformity.

Mark, the United States spends a ridiculous amount of money on education - at all levels. Education is not underfunded. Like any government-run agency, it is poorly managed because it does not have to compete in a free market.

And you can’t solve that type of problem by throwing more money at it… there is never enough money to satiate the beast. They’ll always want more. The solution isn’t more good money after bad - it’s a dramatic overhaul of how the education system operates.

Maybe Mark Lenin could splain why in the state of Montana we spend over $9400 per student and the fed gov spends $14,000 per student on the reservations.

Wiley-

When you say the United States spends “a ridiculous amount of money on education - at all levels,” I’m sure you’ve got some basis for comparison there - like say, the rest of the developed world. You wouldn’t say something like that without knowing the context. Right?

And I’m the first to tell you that there are some bad teachers out there. But I went to a private school, one that was “competing in the free market,” and I had plenty of them myself. You know why? Because they had to be paid even less than teachers in public schools. If the school system kept raising tuition, their enrollment would have dropped dramatically. They were hiring teachers and then seeing them run off to the public schools for better pay.

And that’s something you don’t see in your ridiculously simplistic approach (The free market solves everything!). Good teachers would go to the areas that pay better, which would invariably be the neighborhoods with more affluent students, because they could afford the higher tuition. The poorer areas would suffer (more than they already do.)

Your “solution” is no solution at all. It would just make things worse. But then again, I guess your idea of making things better is having to pay less taxes, plain and simple.

Cry me a river.

I assume from reading the responses here that you guys know what the proper amount to spend on education is, and that Bridger had exceeded that amount. So please put up the numbers.

Metapolitics aside, a four-day school week is bad.

You’re not finishing your sentences. What to do about it? Should teachers take a 20% cut in pay to satisfy you. Should we presume that they are both incompetent and overpaid?

You’re lashing out in many directions.

I think bloggers named Mark T should sell their computers, stop paying for Internet service and donate the money they raise and save to educate a child.

In other words, you got nuthin’.

It would seem so; Wiley, I was really looking for something from you here. I thought maybe you would bring something new to this debate, but it seems not.

As a teacher (ex, that is), I can tell you that when mediocre teachers are kept around, it is only because the pay is so terrible (and the expectations so high) that they cannot get qualified people to continue doing the job. I left teaching for much those reasons,. even though I was quite qualified and far from mediocre.

Believe me, tenure is not the shield you guys shriek about; tenured teachers could indeed be fired fairly easily. Untenured teachers could be fired without cause; that is the only difference.

As for your ‘money’ comment; you are certainly right that there is no amount of money in the world that would truly leave “no child” behind; it is a foolishly idealistic notion for a party that likes to talk big about being realists. We all known NCLB set its standards with latent goal of leading schools to their own doom via their failure to get 100% proficiency.

Or do you really think that is possible? Are you that naive?

As a Bridger parent, and a stay at home mother who daycare will not be an issue for, I am saddened that our administraion implemented this.  They are not doing it to save money, they say they are doing it for more uninterrupted class time.  The athletes are tired because of games on school nights, they have to leave school for various things such as ski days, ad sales for annual staff, they will “try” to get these scheduled on Thursday nights, Fridays and Saturdays.   It is really sad that we decided to cut our education time, and they did, so the kids who play sports are not tired at school.   As a parent I guess i feel it is my job to decide if my children should be allowed to participate in extracurricular activities if they are interfering with their education. The athletic director said that sometimes practices keep the kids at school till 9:30.  Bridger town cufew is 9:00.   Bridger decided to add 30 minutes a day, or 2 hours a week,  or 5 minutes a class period, to make up for a 6 hour Friday that will be missed.  You see they figured that since they were already above what the state requires for hours they could cut hours and still meet state guidelines.  Sadly, Bridger is rated on sites like Schooldigger, Great Schools, and the test scores straight from OPI, pretty poorly.  There are small town near us that consistently score better.  Which does give us that option, DRIVE THEM TO ANOTHER TOWN, possibly pay out of district tuition, but I am weighing that option. This is my childrens education and I don’t take it lightly. I wish the administration took it as seriously.   I would love to have my kids home 3 days a week, it would be much easier for me, but this is not about me.  It is sad that the administration feels that what is best for them should be put before what is best for the children.  I want my kids to have every opportunity to follow their dreams, whatever they may be, and I believe education is the key to that.  We were told that some teachers brought this idea to the superintendent this spring, and it was voted in this spring!! They sent a little brochure in the kids backpack saying they were going to have a “parent informational ” meeting 5 days later.  When we got to the meeting the school board was prepared to vote on it THAT NIGHT.  They decided to hold off on the vote for another meeting 2 weeks later.  They got the majority of parents on board by saying they will try it this year, and if it doesn’t work they will discuss going back to 5 days next year.  One school board member said she didn’t feel we were ready to do this yet, that it would be hard to swallow if it failed but she would vote yes to pass it so that we didn’t lose momentum.  The superintendent didn’t know much about it, he actually couldn’t answer what other school was doing it in Montana , he said he thinks it’s Victor, well it’s one of those towns up there.  They jumped into this without any plan as to how.  If you go to Custer County Schools in South Dakota’s website, they have an implemantation and evaluation plan, which highlights things we didn’t even consider, they sent out questionares to community members,they made sure they had their ducks in a row BEFORE they ,as our administration put it, “gave it a try.  We recieved one brochure, two school year schedules,and 3 hours of discussion, 2 of which were on how the sports schedule would help the tired athletes.  The superintendent actually got flustered over a comment made on how it seems like it was for the teachers.  He basically said it was for the teachers, since we couldn’t afford to pay them as much as Wyoming, or other towns in Montana,  that this would help us keep teachers, and get more teachers to apply at our school.  So we will have teachers come teach our kids so that they can have Fridays off.  There is such thing as a teacher who puts learning first, they are the ones I want to hear from, ones that do not stand to benefit from this but would give their honest opinion, not as to how great it would be for them, but as to what this means to education. 

[…] by Wiley Cody Editor’s Note: This is a comment posted by “Parent” on the post Teachers Get Four-Day Work Week. I promoted it to a stand-alone post because it describes the problems with this decision as well […]

Hey Wiley-

This still doesn’t address some of the questions you left unanswered in the comment thread of your other post. Your disdain for public education permeates that comment thread, as does your disdain for educators. This parent has some legitimate points, but the number one issue is still funding. If the school district feels it needs to do this for teacher recruitment, it’s because they’re having trouble hiring teachers at $22,000 a year to start (go figure). The problem with your complaining about this is that you don’t give two shits about the root of the problem (did I mention that it’s FUNDING?).

Your solution is…. what… start a private school in Bridger? Brilliant idea.

Anyways, this is your precious market at work. All things being equal, Bridger would have absolutely no trouble hiring teachers. But all things are not equal, and it would be foolishness to assume that they were. Bridger is a small town that’s not in convenient driving distance of any bigger towns, and any teacher in their right mind will move to a bigger city with better pay to teach students the same subject matter.

So if this deal really is for teacher recruitment (I’m sure they’re saving a boatload of money too…) than it’s a matter of leveling the playing field with places that have more convenient location AND better pay. That’s the market, man. Isn’t it a beautiful thing?

Anyways, I’m in the process of looking for a teaching job in Oregon, so as you can imagine I have a little knowledge in this subject area. It would be economic suicide for me to stay in Montana to teach. Most of us College kids are graduating with upwards of $20,000 in student loan debt, you know. And if you think we can take care of that with the paltry salary that teachers in Montana make, than you’ve got another thing coming. School districts HAVE to find other ways to make us want to stay.

But who am I kidding? You don’t give a shit how much the people teaching your kids are making. You just enjoy complaining about the results.

Wrong comment thread. Dammit. Reposting up top.