An email to the School Board with a hopeful recommendation:
Hello Board members,
I think it is time to look seriously at models for year round school for a couple of reasons:
1. Student achievement – kids who are struggling could repeat a quarter, kids who are advanced would have more options.
2. Building use- it just makes sense to use the buildings year round
3. Sports-my personal opinion is that competitive sports should be eliminated from public school, but since that won’t happen, a kid who is on a team, could take an easier load during the sport season.
Please seriously add year round school to the discussion about boundary changes.
Thank you.
My Cold Water:
********,
Sorry to be a month late responding to your email. Of late I rather hate looking at my inbox and for a long while I had trouble opening it for some glitchy technical reasons. I know that’s not even a poor excuse for this tardy reply.
I don’t know if anyone else responded to your email but here is my reaction. Your suggestion makes total sense and is totally impossible. Even with our nine month school years we have classrooms that are crowded to the max. (Duluth gave up staffing for brand spanking new schools) Without some incredibly brave, creative sacrifices on the part of all involved there is no way to pay for the staff time a full year school would require. I don’t even think that if we could persuade voters to triple the recent bond levy increase we could come close to accomplishing this. That would only add between 42 and 54 teachers. It might be a start but we have a long way to go before our voters would trust us with that kind of money.
Sorry to throw cold water on your excellent idea.
If you would like to reply I recommend sending a direct reply to my personal email: harrywelty@charter.net as I look at that inbox close to daily.
Harry Welty
