Next year
’s seventh and eighth grade Morgan Hill School District students
may rejoice at the news: Martin Murphy and Britton middle schools
will have shorter days next year. Not all parents will agree this
is a good idea, however. Some have spoken about educational “rigor”
during board meetings. Other
parents have told trustees they are very much in favor of
shortening the day.
Next year’s seventh and eighth grade Morgan Hill School District students may rejoice at the news: Martin Murphy and Britton middle schools will have shorter days next year.
Not all parents will agree this is a good idea, however. Some have spoken about educational “rigor” during board meetings. Other parents have told trustees they are very much in favor of shortening the day.
“I have to share with you that this is hard for me,” Trustee Shellé Thomas said during the April 12 meeting. “I look at this as we have a new opportunity next year and in the three years this agreement will be in effect to restructure our middle schools, to do what is in the best interest of our students … We have the opportunity to define for the first time in 25 years what middle schools will look like … I think it is a very important issue to build in staff time.”
School Board Trustees voted 4-1 during the April 19 meeting to ratify the agreement negotiated between the district and the Morgan Hill Federation of Teachers (MHFT) calling for middle schools to return to state-mandated middle school hours next year.
The agreement did not include an adjustment to pay.
Trustee Amina Khemici voted against ratification; Board President George Panos was absent due to a family bereavement.
The two middle schools have been on high school hours since ninth graders were moved to the middle schools 25 years ago. With the projected opening of Sobrato High in August, the ninth grade will return to the high schools.
The agreement ratified by the board calls for students to attend school for 55,718 instructional minutes each year. Currently, according to Assistant Superintendent Denise Tate, Britton and Martin Murphy students are on high school minutes – 64,800 per year.
Murphy Principal Rhoda Wolfskehl said the exact scheduling has not yet been worked out.
“We have talked about things, but now that the board has approved it, we need to sit down and look at the best way to do it,” she said.
It is likely that each period of the school day will have some minutes shaved off.
With less minutes, Wolfskehl said, there should be less disruption in classrooms.
“This allows the teaching time to be more efficient,” she said. “It does not mean less instruction for students. It will mean more quality time.”
Several middle school teachers told trustees in an earlier meeting that with longer periods, different topics or activities often have a transition time between them, which can waste five minutes or more getting students back on task.
“I think we’ll see fewer discipline issues with a shorter period,” Wolfskehl said.
Recent middle school research, “Taking Center Stage,” she said, shows that students at this age have a shorter attention span than high school students.
“By the end of the day, they are exhausted,” she said. “Teaching challenging academic subjects later in the day becomes very difficult.”
Students involved in school sports also frequently miss fifth and sixth periods, she said, because the middle schools they compete with are on middle school schedules so the games are played before school lets out.
MHFT President Donna Foster said the shorter day is an important part of the middle school restructuring process.
“This is the number of minutes that, at the state level, have been determined to be most appropriate for the students at that grade level,” she said. “It is implied that teachers are professionals, and they know best how to manage their time to create the best instructional program for children within the amount of time they have.”
Foster was also referring to comments from some trustees, Thomas included, at an earlier meeting about using the “extra” time for staff development.
“I think it would be extremely valuable for our middle school staffs have time to look at restructuring, as well as articulation,” she said. “But at none of our sites do we have any mandatory staff development in the contract. We have staff development during our in-service days and at some staff meetings, but no mandatory staff development. There is no money for compensation for mandatory staff development.”
Tate said that a suggestion by some trustees that the extra time be used for articulation with elementary school and high school teachers or some other form of staff development, included as a part of the agreement, could not be mandated.
“I know this was a priority of the board,” she said. “We could not get contract language to that effect.”
Foster said if the two middle school staffs were interested, they could create a trust agreement at the sites.
“This is a possibility when a staff wants to try something new and different,” she said. “Maybe they’d like to try something involving curriculum, maybe they’d like to try a new bell schedule. They have to have consensus, a basic majority of staff in agreement. Then bring their proposal to the trust committee which reviews it.”
A trust agreement, Foster said, cannot supersede the union contract and has a one year life but it can be renewed. She said Los Paseos Elementary has an agreement this year around teacher evaluation, and P.A. Walsh Elementary has one regarding the structure of the school day.
“So if the middle schools wanted to establish one around staff development time, to create some kind of schedule to work on restructuring, that would certainly be possible,” she said.
Middle school teachers have said it is difficult for them to have time for articulation, particularly with the elementary schools. It is possible, Foster said, that staffs could work on scheduling regular time for this type of collaboration.
