Four day foolishness

I don’t know how I missed this today. A friend just emailed it to me:

It was only a few months ago that Dr. Dixon was waving the possibility of a four-day school week before Duluth School Board members. Since that time he’s crafted a budget cutting $4.5 million away including a lot of muscle and very little fat. There has been every indication from the state that similar cutting will be necessary next year and that only a little over a million has been saved by combing our high schools. Furthermore, the $600,000 from the Obama Administration is, as Tim Grover explained, a one time deal. Paying for All day K next year is ridiculous.

Yet despite this Dr. Dixon is encouraging his board to add all day kindergarten to the budget. If the Board does decide next week to proceed with the million dollar proposal to adopt all day K it seems very likely that they will have so little funds available in a year or two that they will have no choice but to consider adopting a four-day school week or dropping the all day K after a one or two year run. That should keep the customers satisfied.

If this Board is serious about trying to retain children they’d better think long and hard about the nightmare exodus a four day school week will cause. If I sat on the Board I wouldn’t trust any of the financial data that they have been given. Darned, where did I put that strange explanatory sheet with the buckets from Bill Hanson showing how the Red Plan will save lots of money. Its a beaut.

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