New Hampshire schools are out for summer.
But new rules recently passed by the State Board of Education could open the door for districts to have year-round school, an extended school day, or even a shortened school week.
New Hampshire Public Radio's Amy Quinton reports, some districts are considering new options.
Most schools across the country operate on a 180 day calendar.
It means a typical six hour day for students, five days a week, and a long summer vacation.
There’s no real reason or research behind that established calendar, it’s just been tradition, including here in New Hampshire.
So in approving the state’s rules that govern schools, the board of education decided to change it.
Chairman Dave Reudig says the old calendar was too rigid and didn’t necessarily benefit students.
we did it so you could be more flexible and do whatever you wanted to do in a district, but you wouldn’t have to account for a certain amount of hours of what we call seat time, that’s not productivity, that’s not saying the child has learned anything, its saying the child has sat in this seat for x amount of time, that doesn’t seem to me to be a great way to measure education.
While schools can still use the 180 day calendar, they now have the option of switching to a different system.
Elementary students would still have to have at least 945 hours of instruction time, middle and high school students would have to have 990 hours.
The change comes as welcome news to Principal Peter Sweet of North Hampton School.
I think it’s exciting that people take a look and spend some time and come up with a creative way to come up with a calendar that makes sense for students instead of just doing it the same old way.
Sweet is known for his innovative ideas.
During the 80’s and early 90’s as a principal at Deerfield Community School, he launched a four day a week calendar.
Back then, the K through 8th grade school was struggling with high energy costs and Sweet thought the switch would save the school money.
It exceeded our expectations what we imagined, we just thought the money part would be the important part, we thought the education would stay the same, the quality, and we saw the opposite happen we saved some money, but it wasn’t significant, but the education quality improved drastically.
Sweet says absenteeism decreased, and test scores increased.
Students had longer days – about seven and a half hours – and had Fridays off.
That allowed them to make dentist and doctors appointments on Fridays, and have longer blocks of instructional time during the four days in school.
Bill Carozza was a teacher at Deerfield then.
Once a month we had major staff meeting on Friday, so you could show up in your shorts, we had lunch, doughnuts and just relaxed, it built a culture of the school and morale was really high, so teachers loved it and it was sad when we lost the four day week.
The state board of education eventually stopped the four day a week calendar experiment, despite support from the Deerfield community.
Carozza is now a principal at Harold Martin Elementary School in Hopkinton.
He says with the State Board’s new rules, it paves the way to try such experiments again.
1073 :47 I’d love to see it happen in the state, I’d love to see something like that, it doesn’t have to be a four day week, but something out of the box, a paradigm shift that would allow parents and teachers and kids to find more time for learning.
But Carozza says such major changes in the calendar don’t come easily.
There’s some disadvantages as we looked at it as a possibility in Hopkinton, it’s a lot more difficult in a k through 12 district because sports for instance in a middle high school happen right after school, well if you had a longer school day that would be difficult.
Teacher contracts are another problem.
Mark Joyce, with New Hampshire’s School Administrators Association says contracts are usually governed by a 180 day calendar.
There’s a financial impact or a negotiation impact to those changes, its not a simple matter that if a community or a school board wishes a change it will change they have to raise the resources in order to accomplish that.
But supporters say by allowing flexibility in the calendar, it could help students who want to earn credit during the summer, or through internships or “real world learning†opportunities.
And if a school district had the advantage of air conditioning in its school buildings, the potential for year round schooling exists.
Again North Hampton School Principal Peter Sweet.
I think a lot of times it makes a lot of sense, when kids leave in June and they don’t return until September you go through that whole regression piece, that long block probably doesn’t work in terms of what we know about how kids learn.
But probably the most difficult challenge is getting teachers, students and parents used to the idea of changing a tradition.
Supporters say that will take courage and the political will to get it done.
School calendars for the coming year are already approved.
So the State Board of Education doesn’t expect to see any major changes for another two years.
For NHPR news, I’m Amy Quinton.
