Maine teachers want more prep time at students’ expense

The following editorial ran in the Sun Journal (Lewiston, Maine ), May 3:

A proposal by the Auburn School Department for early-release Wednesdays for middle- and highschoolers sounds quite a lot like its proposal for late-start Wednesdays, pitched and quickly folded in 2012.

Five years ago, Superintendent Katy Grondin said the department is "committed to raising student achievement by increasing teacher effectiveness in order for all students to be career and college ready when they graduate from Edward Little High School." Her idea for increasing teacher effectiveness was to use latestart Wednesdays to give staff extra time for training.

Today, with the early-release proposal, the goal remains the same: to give teachers time for professional development, to incorporate new mandates and ways of teaching that will help students.

Here's the thing: In order to do this, students will lose 13 afternoons — some would say 13 days — in the classroom.

Parents didn't like the plan in 2012 and are opposed to the one now. One obvious reason is timing. One of the chief complaints in 2012 was that the Auburn School Department revealed the idea of late-start Wednesdays quite suddenly, with very little explanation to the community. The backlash was immediate.

The same thing appears to have happened again, with many parents unaware of the details of the new plan even as the School Committee is scheduled to vote on it tonight.

Do Auburn teachers need more time for training, to learn and share new techniques?

They do, and there is plenty of evidence to support effective training results in better teaching.

Do Auburn students need as much time in the classroom as possible? Absolutely. These two needs are not at cross-purposes.

And parents deserve a full say in how the school department fulfills both needs.

Parents and students — and even some teachers — already say that in the elementary grades, where 11:30 a.m. release on Wednesdays is the norm, those Wednesday morning academic schedules are half-hearted. It's hard to get motivated for a half-day.

Especially when a lunch period is also squeezed in.