St. Charles School Board moves ahead with interim plan for longer elementary school day

ST. CHARLES – St. Charles Community Unit School District 303 will be moving ahead with a longer elementary school day starting in the fall, despite the district still not knowing what that school day will look like because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At their May 26 meeting, the majority of St. Charles School Board members approved an interim plan for the longer school day, which takes in account that the school day may look different this fall because of the pandemic. The school day at all of the district's elementary schools will be extended by 40 minutes starting in the fall.

"It's not the full implementation, which is what we are hoping for the 2021-2022 school year," School Superintendent Jason Pearson told school board members. "Some of the considerations that we put in place as we thought about next school year for the longer elementary day was the question of whether or not we would return to in-person learning at the beginning of the school year or somewhere after the school year starts and ensuring that the staff that we hired and the programming and support that we provide to students addresses some of the learning loss issues that we anticipate will occur with our elementary children."

The longer elementary school day is part of a three-year agreement with the St. Charles Education Association that was approved by the School Board in June 2019. The association represents the district's teachers.

Richmond Intermediate School already has a 40-minute extended school day, which runs from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. It implemented the longer school day eight years ago.

Voting against the implementation of the interim plan were board members Michael Bryant and Heidi Fairgrieve. Bryant wanted to hold off voting on the plan until the board found out from its legal counsel what the ramifications on the teachers contract would be if the board did not move forward with the extended school day.

Fairgrieve concurred with Bryant. While Fairgrieve said she still supports a longer elementary school day, but she was concerned about the timing of the plan.

"I appreciate that we will not be at a financial deficit at the end of 2020, but I think there's a big unknown as to what additional expense we're going to incur to be able to get our students back in school," she said.

Empower is designed to provide additional learning opportunities beyond core instruction. For the 2020-2021 school year, Empower teachers will support classroom teachers with remote learning best practices.

After the transitional period, students would attend Empower one or two times a week for the rest of the school year. The interim plan will cut the budget for materials from $199,994 to $139,693, which will be paid for by district and grant funds.

The district also will see reduced personnel costs by implementing the plan on an interim basis. For full implementation of the new elementary day, which includes additional art, music, physical education and Empower as the new special, it would require 26 full-time employees.

However, the interim plan requires only 18.5 full-time employees for a cost savings of $525,000. Also, three additional positions will be moved from district funds to title funds, for an additional $210,000 in savings.

The reduction in new positions comes from assigning more sections to the district's existing staff, primarily in Empower, where the district's LRC/media specialists will each teach one section of a special for each classroom each week in place of one section of Empower.