Superintendent proposes extending school year
School board president raises concerns about burnout
Santa Fe Public Schools is making plans to extend the school year.
At a school board meeting Tuesday night, Superintendent Veronica García presented a draft of a school calendar that could add 30 instructional days in the summer through a voluntary program that depends on teacher and student interest.
“There are two fundamental things we have to have,” García said. “First we have to have teachers in the classroom, and second thing is the kids have to come to school. If the kids aren’t in school, we can’t teach them.”
Across the state last summer, the Public Education Department funded extensions to the school year through two programs — Extended Learning, which adds up to 10 days of instruction for any grade, and K-5 Plus, which adds 25 days to the elementary school calendar.
For the Extended Learning program in 2020-21, García said the district will most likely apply for funding for every school to move its start date up by five school days from Aug. 17 to Aug. 10.
For the K-5 Plus program, which is voluntary for students and teachers, García said the district has discussed with the Public Education Department the possibility of receiving more funding to expand the program to K-8 Plus.
Tuesday night, García proposed one version of K-8 Plus that extends the school year by 25 days and another that extends the school year by 20 days plus 10 minutes added to each day. Both proposals include a minimum four-week summer break in June. Compared to this year, the draft of the 2020-21 school calendar shortens winter break from three weeks to two and adds three days off in October and two in April.
“Burnout is an issue,” board President Kate Noble said. “We need to take care of our teachers. We need to retain them. The calendar matters to everybody.”
García said she expects the district will know its funding levels by March for Extended Learning and K-8 Plus, which will depend on how many teachers are willing
to work.
According to a survey of 815 Santa Fe Public Schools staff members working with pre-kindergarten through eighth grade students, 34 percent said they are willing to work an additional 20 instructional days and 26 percent said they would be willing to work an additional 25 days. Nearly 52 percent said they see teacher and student burnout as a potential challenge posed by an extended school year.
“We’re not applying to add 25 days for the entire district because we don’t have the employees,” said Grace Meyer, president of National Education Association-Santa Fe. “It will be voluntary, and we will apply at several schools that had percentages of 50 percent or more.”
According to the district, over 50 percent of survey respondents from six schools — Salazar, Nava, Ramirez Thomas and EJ Martinez Elementary schools as well as K-8 Aspen and Gonzales Community schools — said they were willing to work an additional 20 instructional days, which would include between $4,500 and $6,600 in additional salary per teacher.
The Public Education Department requires K-5 Plus teachers to stay with the same cohort of students in the summer and the school year.
Last summer, García said she was able to gain flexibility from the department to offer K-5 Plus in schools in which teachers in two of six grade levels were brought in from other schools or grades.
“We’re not going to have any districtwide K-8 programs, and I don’t think we’ll have 100 percent participation at any school,” García said. “It’s voluntary on both sides.”
At a news conference earlier this month, Albuquerque Public Schools administrators outlined three options for the 2020-21 school calendars — keep the traditional calendar with school from the middle of August to late May, extend the traditional calendar by 10 days or extend the school calendar to begin in late July, end in early June and add more break in between.
APS said it is giving individual school staffs and families the chance to vote on which calendar to implement.
Parents in Santa Fe Public Schools said they hope any changes in the district, which had over 13,000 students last school year compared to over 90,000 in APS, would be consistent across the board.
“If you’ve got your elementary, middle and high school kids all on different schedules, that would be problematic,” said Annjenette Torres, Parent Teacher Organization president at Milagro Middle School. “For me, it would have to be all or nothing. All the schools are on the same year-round schedule or not. Even [pilot programs] at some schools would be difficult in my opinion.”