Hawaii public schools go to 4 day school week

Technical Robotics Education and Curriculum
1

Due to the bad economy and major budget shortfalls, the DOE, State, and our Union agreed to furloughs that essentially creates at least 1 day/week off (due to holiday or furlough) for the remainder of our school year.

Our teachers need to now ratify the contract in order for it to take place.

We were told that the school needs to shut down on the furlough days and that no robotics activity can take place. My concern is during the 6 week construction period, where our team meets every single day.

2

Sorry to hear that. There are, however lots of teams that meet less than every day. We meet twice per week and once on the weekend during build. OUr robots certainly aren’t as advanced as many, but we do indeed get by pretty well with our schedule. Good luck, these changes/obstacles are never easy.

3

The solution would have to be either working offsite, appealing to the School Board to get keys to the shop, or working a few days a week. All of them are doable, none of them especially ideal.

Perhaps find a team whose shop is open on the furlough days and do some fabrication there?

4

Ok, I am more concerned about how the students get a proper education when the rest of the world is going to more school hours instead of less.

5

Can you provide a link to a news article?

6

EDIT: I had originally thought that they would add the hours onto the other four days, thus saving on overhead (HVAC, power, staff) costs slightly, but according to this article it looks like they are eliminating 17 school days all together.

I now fully echo Raul’s concern…

7

<made irrelevant>
Well, that depends, if you extend the day so classes are 25% longer you get the same amount of instructional time, if you tack on 15 minutes to a 60 minute period over the 4 days you recoup the lost day.
</irrelevant>

However, I have a feeling there are many places schools could cut costs short of cutting class time and also echo Raul’s concern.

My hunch for why they are doing this is so they dont have to run the school one more day. After experiencing the heat in Hawaii I can assume that cooling is a huge cost. Based on this assumption (which is purely speculation and can in no way be taken as fact) it would make no sense to allow teams to meet during those days off because it defeats the whole point. Best bet is to develop a new work schedule based around fewer meeting days. Many teams do not meet everyday and it works ok for them.

8

Jared,
Yes, they chose 17 days because it amounts to those weeks that have no holidays/other things going on…that would cause students to miss school.
It was either this or massive layoffs and I am a firm believer that massive layoffs would have hurt the schools even more.

Society is willing to spend more money to fix prisons and pay out welfare checks, instead of putting/keeping money in education which is the backbone of our country. Go figure.:mad:

9

One benefit to the 4 day week is that buses operate 20% less. Busing is very expensive to districts.

10

I had exactly the same thought process and, thus, now echo Raul and Jared.

11

Glenn,
I wonder how a Friday is any different than a weekend day? Didn’t you previously work on weekends? And isn’t a Friday under this scenario just one more weekend day?

12

Are they possibly going to give kids more homework to do on the days that they have off? If not, how are they getting away with this.

However, there definitely is stuff that you could do out of the shop during build season.

13

You know, at when I first read the title of the article, I couldn’t help but think that you guys were really lucky (I mean what kid doesn’t want an extended weekend). But after you guys reinserted reality to the mix that attitude has sort of deflated. I agree totally with Raul. Especially for those involved in AP classes losing half a month of school will be a massive pain (not to mention a tremendous disadvantage on the tests).

As for the issue of a limited build schedule I’m a tad curious. Does this no activity directive also carry over to include the weekends as well? If it’s just one weekday it shouldn’t be to difficult to adapt to, but a weekday and the whole weekend might make things a tad more more interesting. Best of luck either way.

14

Joe,
At first, that’s what I thought…just like a weekend day.
But later, was told otherwise by our admin, but they are not 100% sure.

I wonder if its because of cutting other costs, such as electricity. Our athletic director also said that they were talking about rescheduling football games also that fell on a furlough day.

I guess it remains to be seen.

AP teachers have been in great discussion the past several days. Based on our school schedule, kids will lose out of 40% of AP instruction time per week. Ouch!

15

I had the same thoughts as Rich et al…

This reminds me a little of what we in Ontario called “Rae days”, after the Ontario premier who, in 1993, introduced something similar for most provincial workers. It did not enjoy the support of the major public service workers’ unions, and was unpopular among my teachers at the time (presumably because their pay was being cut despite their collective bargaining agreement).

(What happened to the premier, Bob Rae? His party was soundly defeated in the next provincial election, mostly because of the unpopularity of this program.)

As implemented in the Scarborough public schools, Rae days were a bit different from what’s apparently being proposed in Hawaii. Many of the unpaid days were concatenated on to the March break (and similar things), rather than cancelling two of every five Fridays.

How long is the Hawaii school year, anyway? Around 180 instructional days per annum?

16

Wow that’s pretty drastic.

Is there a chance of reconsideration, Glenn? Or has this been finalized?

17

Here in British Columbia some northern districts went to a four day school week a few years ago, however that was a move to cut HEATING and bussing costs as opposed to cutting COOLING and bussing costs. They did it, however, by increasing the length of the school day on the four days they are running.

From what I understand, they are not in any particular hurry to switch back, and are actually kind of liking it.

Province-wide we have also had job actions (typically strikes, but also lock-outs) that have shut schools for more than a week, most recently a two-week shut down about three or four years back. There has been very little evidence that student learning was harmed by a one-time system shutdown such as this.

So I wouldn’t be too worried about the effect on this year’s students’ education, assuming they make up for the missed time with a bit of extra homework (and that the school schedule can spread the lost time equally across classes). How it works out if the schedule is cut for a longer period of time… that I don’t know.

What I do know is that the quantity of time a student spends in school is far less important than the quality of the time that they spend in school. If, by sacrificing quantity, the system is preserving quality, it is probably a fair trade.

As for your build time, over the past few years we have been trying to embrace the idea that while FIRST is an exciting and valuable part of life, it is just that… a part of life. We work hard on our robot Monday through Thursday… from 3:00 to 9:00 typically, but try to take Friday, Saturday and Sunday off when possible… although towards the end of the build we have been known to work through the weekend, too.

To do this we have had to concentrate on simplifying our designs and, as we focus on thinking more and building less, we have found that our machines have performed at least as well as we did in our “build till you drop” past.

Good luck… you may find this works out great!

Jason

18

My guess is that the teachers will pass this. The alternative that has been discussed, is a straight pay cut. The school budget and teachers are already stretched. I would suspect some teachers are going to use their time to find work.
I just want to add that it doesnt help morale for teachers as everyone is already struggling in this bad economy. Personally, I have a part-time job, and plan on working more to make up for the 7.94% furlough cut.
I dont teach AP Physics anymore, but if I did, I probably would have afterschool sessions on the days we have school.

19

I’m hoping the kids also take it on themselves to prepare for the AP test as most do. Its not too bad with the proper resources.

Anyhow, best of luck with the rest of the year. I really hope everything works out for you and 359.

See you in NJ? :rolleyes:

20

I wish team 359 luck in finding a way to make this work, though i do offer a word of caution. This weekend i was lucky enough to attend a meeting about the furlow/contract ideas. The problems that they brought up with working on the furlow days is that it would be a violation of labor laws. Problems could be created because between the union and the department of education. I did get to ask if it was possible for teachers to volunteer time (thinking about how crazy FRC season can get) however the response was that if teachers are volunteering time for a job they usually do, then department of education would be obligated to pay them. This of course leads to other problems with labor laws and such. However, teachers can volunteer (without pay) for a job that they do not usually do.

I’m not sure if any of that sheds light on ways that Hawaii public school teams can find ways to work on potential furlow days, but i do wish team 359 as well as the other teams the best of luck.