Scott Bruun: A School Week and Its Discontents

Wednesday, April 08, 2015

Scott Bruun, GoLocalPDX MINDSETTER™

Truth can be stranger than fiction. And there was a bit of truth in Salem last week, or at least a bit of stagecraft, that may be the strangest thing we see during the 2015 legislative session.

Last week the Oregon House passed a K-12 education budget of $7.3 billion. This budget will be used by Oregon’s nearly two hundred school districts over the next two years to fund operations, teacher salaries and benefits. It’s a 9% increase over the last biennial budget, and it passed on a party-line vote. All 35 House Democrats voted ‘Yes,’ while all 25 Republicans voted ‘No.’ Republicans voted ‘No’ because the budget, they said, “falls short of meeting the needs” of Oregon’s students and schools.

Wait, what?

You mean legislative Republicans put a higher priority on school spending than the Democrats? Higher than the Democrats, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of teachers’ union political money goes toward electing Democrats?

What alternate reality world do we now find ourselves in?

It reminds me of ‘Mirror, Mirror,’ one of the better episodes from the original Star Trek. The episode where an ion storm causes a transporter malfunction that sends Kirk and the landing party to a parallel universe, and an alternate Enterprise. On it, Kirk finds a savage crew and a barbaric, goatee-clad Mr. Spock. Meanwhile the real Enterprise, with the real Spock, beams up a landing party that has been transformed into brutish thugs. This alternate Kirk, a violent megalomaniac, seems like the 1960s sci-fi equivalent of Vladimir Putin.

Those damn ion storms, everyone knows they can be a real problem. And now it seems one has struck Salem.

Or maybe it’s not some parallel universe after all. You see even though Democrats voted to increase spending on public education by 9% over the next two years, they also voted to turn all kindergarten into full-day kindergarten. Meaning they voted more money for kindergarten, more for teachers of kindergarten, more for taxpayer-funded all-day daycare for kindergarten parents, and less for every other grade.

This means that classrooms and students in those other grades, grades 1-12, will only see a 1.2%-or-so increase in spending this next year. Not even enough to cover annual cost inflation.

Turns out those House Republicans were right. By expanding the size and scope of government services, House Democrats have under-funded basic education. So once again, despite the fact that adequate funds are available, arts and athletics at schools will be constrained, classroom size will get no better, and actual school learning days will be limited. And as we look at the mediocre performance of Oregon’s schools over the years, mediocre as measured by student test results and graduation rates, we should strongly consider this last point – school days.

These days Oregon’s students rarely, if ever, have full back-to-back school weeks. A full school week being five full days of school, Monday through Friday. In fact it’s an increasingly rare thing to have even one full school week. Consider: Oregon kids, the week before last, had five days off for Spring Break. Yet in my suburban school district kids also had the preceding Friday off, so Spring Break now equals six days. Fast forward to this week, only a week after Spring Break, and those same kids had Monday off. This time, according to the sign in front of the school, for “staff development day.”

Or how about Thanksgiving? Use to be that students got Thursday and Friday off for a nice four-day weekend. Fast forward, now most public schools are closed the entire week of Thanksgiving. In any case, whether it’s holidays becoming “holi-weeks,” or simply the near ceaseless drain of “teacher planning” days, early-dismissal or late-arrival days, ad-hoc half-days, “in-service” days, or “staff development” days, one thing is certain. Oregon students do not get enough actual “learning” days in school.

The new normal is a four-day school week, at best. But it shouldn’t be this way. The dollars for full weeks of school, week-in-and-week-out, are available. Oregon’s elected leaders simply need to adequately fund what we have, instead of continuously creating new programs which then leads to inadequate funding for everything else.

Focus on the basics. Give parents five days of school a week for their kids, consistently, and you will see fewer frustrated parents. More importantly, give kids five days of school consistently and you will see better student performance, better test performance, better graduation performance, better preparation for college and ultimately, better preparation for work and careers.

It’s not rocket science. It’s not some new, trendy academic fad in education. It’s not “Common Core” or “No Child Left Behind.” It’s just time in school, time in the classroom.

In the last analysis, if legislators and our governor want to create an education legacy. If they want to improve Oregon’s education performance, while also best serving Oregon’s students and the taxpayers who pay the bills, they simply need to provide for full weeks of school. Five days this week, and five days the next.

Scott Bruun is a fifth-generation Oregonian and recovering politician. He lives with his family in the 'burbs', yet dutifully commutes to Portland every day where he earns his living in public affairs with Hubbell Communications.

Related Slideshow: Top 100 Oregon High Schools

GoLocalPDX has ranked high schools across the state based on a method developed at Babson College, Mass. See below for the top 100 schools in the Beaver State.

Scott Bruun: A School Week and Its Discontents

Related Slideshow: Top 100 Oregon High Schools

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