PEORIA -- A story in today's Peoria Journal Star questions whether Peoria School District 150's plan to cut 90 minutes out of every Wednesday for teacher planning is legal. The story quotes state officials, who also note that no plan has been submitted by District 150's administrators.
A plan, to be approved by the Illinois State Board of Education, is required to amend the already approved school calendar.
When you burrow past all the education-ese and legal jargon, here are the facts:
1. Illinois law requires 300 minutes or five hours of instruction per school day. That does not include recess or lunch. District 150 currently has about six hours of instruction.
2. Cutting 90 minutes from every Wednesday for teacher planning in 12 of the district's 16 primary schools violates that rule, and also raises issues of equal education for all students because the 5th graders in the other schools would receive more teaching time.
Oh, and many of those dozen schools are on the academic watch list, and have large numbers of minority students.
How did all this happen?
Let's go back to the beginning. Here's my analysis of this entire debacle, which oddly enough traces back to Aaron Schock, who as School Board president installed Ken Hinton as superintendent in 2003 after Schock led the move to oust Supt. Kay Royster, the district's first black and female superintendent.
Schock then exploited his "leadership" to win a close race for the Illinois House in 2004. He was reelected in 2006, and now at age 27 he's running for Congress as the Republican nominee in the 18th district.
Fast forward to now. Hinton is still superintendent. (He had to acquire the credentials to hold the job. He didn't have them when he was installed.)
Last year, for lack of a balanced budget in its education fund (schools have several funds to meet operating expenses), District 150 was on the ISBE's financial watch list. It wanted off.
No problem: District 150 administrators charged nearly $1 million in expenses to the federal Title I fund, and got off the watch list.
But wait: last fall Title I auditors came in a disallowed those expenses (see stories posted under Peoria School District 150, below). District officials bargained down the disallowed items to over $600,000. Then they faced a new problem: how to cut that sum out of the district's education fund.
Suddenly in May, a new idea surfaced: The primary school schedule would be cut by 45-minutes per day, to give teachers time to meet and plan, to boost student achievement.
That's right: cutting the time the pupils spend in school will boost their achievement, Hinton said. Never mind that plenty of teacher planning time is already built into the schedule, time teachers say is often wasted. More is better.
And incidentally, special teachers teaching art, music, computers and other subjects would be cut, saving the $600,000.
Oops! The public reacted with outrage. Picketing, petitions and angry comments ensued, so on June 16 the board voted 4-3 for Wacky Wednesdays, the 90-minute cut on Wednesdays, now thought to be illegal.
At that board meeting Hinton confessed that the real motive for the initial cutbacks was to save money.
Wacky Wednesdays won't save any money, he admitted, but teachers would still have more time to plan.
Now this face-saving Wednesday scheme likely won't fly with the ISBE.
Hinton is quoted in the Journal Star story as saying that the 90-minute cutback may be reduced to 60 minutes or 45 minutes.
But that won't solve the equity problem of some 5th graders getting more teaching time than others. Is District 150 begging for a lawsuit? What will that cost?
A side issue: controller/treasurer Guy Cahill's contract, up for renewal, was removed from the agenda at the June 16 meeting. Is he going to take the fall for the disastrous Title I audit? 'No,' insiders say. He wants a bigger raise. His contract is up July 1.
Hinton's contract was renewed with no raise. He makes more than $200,000 a year. He told a group last week that he plans to retire in 2010.
Taxpayers should be wondering what on earth is going on with District 150's administrators! And with School Board board members backing these schemes!
The next board meeting is July 7.
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