Oswego SD308 elementary, junior high students could see slightly shorter school day starting this fall

Starting this fall, Oswego SD308 elementary and junior high students could see their days shortened by five minutes.

The change is part of a proposal by the School Day Committee. Faith Dahlquist, the district’s associate superintendent for educational services who is a member of the committee, brought the proposal to Monday’s School Board meeting.

“For quite some time, there has been interest in trying to find a way to have our elementary school day end earlier, especially in the winter months.”

—  Associate Superintendent for Educational Services Faith Dahlquist

The proposal would decrease all passing periods for junior high students by one minute and lengthen student support time by three minutes.

“Our administrators are really excited about that,” Dahlquist said, in talking about the additional support time the students would receive.

The new school day would be from 8:10 a.m. to 3:05 p.m.

In addition, elementary school students would see their days shortened by five minutes. The new school day would be from 9 a.m. to 3:45 p.m.

“But I want to point out to everyone that the teacher day would not be changing at all,” Dahlquist said. “In our elementary schools right now, there is no one to supervise our students right away. Students come in, but you can imagine that in kindergarten in November, when they come in with their snowsuits and their mittens, it takes a while to get instruction going. So by having our teachers available earlier than that, we’ll actually be letting in students and be able to start instruction a few minutes earlier.”

The committee will be coming back to the board with the proposal in July and plans to continue its work to come up with other possible changes to the student schedule.

“For quite some time, there has been interest in trying to find a way to have our elementary school day end earlier, especially in the winter months,” Dahlquist said. “Our students go home in the dark. Our teachers report that the end of the day is very tiring for a lot of our students.”

The committee also plans to continue to address the problem of long junior high lunch periods. They are currently 41 minutes along.

“Those of you who have ever supervised a junior high lunchroom know that a lot of additional down time is sometimes not a great thing, so that is something we tried to look at,” Dahlquist said.

According to the committee’s report, the unstructured time “often causes more student conflict and misbehavior.”

The committee also looked at how a later start time might affect high school students.

“I wish I could tell you that we were super successful,” she said. “But it was a very difficult job. For those of you who don’t know, most of our buses run three routes. They do a high school route, and junior high and elementary. And because we use the same bus drivers to do that, you have to have enough time to drop off students, go back out into the community, pick up kids and come back to the next level.”

School Board member Jared Ploger voiced concerns about the amount of time that is allocated for junior high lunch periods.

“It’s idle time,” he said.

Ploger also would like to know what large unit school districts have been successful in making the changes that Oswego SD308 is looking at making.

Superintendent John Sparlin spoke in support of the committee’s efforts.

“A lot of time and effort went into this very small change, but I think it’s laying some really great foundational work for what comes next,” he said.