Peoria Pundit

When I was an education reporter, school board members and superintendents would moan and while and gripe and complain that every little thing they did — from the curriculum to employee discipline to the menu in the cafeteria — was tightly controlled by the state.

Turns out in Peoria, not so much.

Parents feel shortening the school day isn’t just wrong, but a violation of state school code.

The Regional Superintendent of Schools says this plan does follow state code because the total number of hours the kids will be in school each week meets state requirements.

[snip]

“The plan as proposed, as I understand it, says we think we can have quality instruction that will offset the the actual contact time with the children,” said Dr. Gerald Brookhart, Regional Superintendent of Schools.

Parents say the amount of contact time with the children is exactly the issue and any plan that shortens that amount of time is the wrong plan.

[Snip]

The regional superintendent says they have not received an official plan from District 150 to shorten the school day, so until they have that nothing can happen.

What? Brookhart is approving a pan he hasn’t even looked at yet?

So much for state oversight.

Brookhart is up for re-election in 2010.

UPDATE: Diane Vespa sent me this:

Very insightful post… congratulations to you for condensing a complicated subject that is fraught with nuance and bureaucracy.

 

The Illinois School code does require a minimum of 5 instructional hours per day. The District is trying to make a legal case for a shortened school day by distorting fine print in the code and re-defining student improvement days to justify their intent to deliver less instructional time to the children of D150. Is it possible that weak-minded and disinterested officials at the state level have bought it? We shall see.

District 150’s attempt to get a shortened Wednesday approved by the state demonstrates  a shameful abuse of school code, and such passage would be in direct contradiction to the spirit and intent of the law. Once again, Peoria children take the hit. It will be interesting to watch this all shake out. A nice little science project compliments of our grade school children.

This entry was posted on June 28, 2008 at 6:26 pm and is filed under Local . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed Both comments and pings are currently closed.