Shorter school days for Gainesville ISD students

Feb. 26—School days are going to be 15 minutes shorter for Gainesville ISD students next year.

After expanding the school days by 25 minutes in the 2023-24 school year, the GISD school board approved the 2024-25 school year calendar with the understanding that the days would be shortened by 15 minutes.

"You add 25 minutes to a school day, 25 minutes doesn't seem like a lot of time," said Superintendent DesMontes Stewart. "When you do 25 minutes over five days, you're looking at 125 minutes, and you add that up over four weeks, over the course of a year ... We want to try to get the kids home just a little bit earlier."

The trade-off is that there will be no banked days in case of bad weather.

Texas schools are required by law to be in session a minimum of 75,600 minutes each school year. The current schedule allows some excess time with six "banked" days, meaning GISD could miss six days of school due to inclement weather or other issues without having to make it up. By making the days 15 minutes shorter, any missed days will have to be made up.

"We're operating in bare bones," said Stewart. "In an event where we have inclement weather and have to shut down schools, what happens then is we take those waiver days, and we make them school days. So instead of being off on a Monday, we facilitate school. That will be communicated by myself, in tandem with the school board well in advance for our parents to know."

These designated make-up days are April 28 and May 12. The 2024-25 school year will run Aug. 7-May 22. There will be a few five-day weeks at the beginning of each semester and due to testing, but most weeks will be four-day weeks with school not being in session on Mondays.

Academic progress

The Texas Academic Performance Report is in, and GISD students struggled with the new end of year testing format.

The TAPR is a report sent out annually by the Texas Education Association to inform school administration of student progress.

"We had a decline in our 'Approaches [Grade Level]' by three percent, in our 'Meets Grade Level' by five percent and our 'Masters Grade Level' by six percent," said Dana Dudenhoeffer, Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction. "That decline, we attribute to this being the first year of online testing for our students."

School administration is doing whatever possible to better prepare the students for the test format.

"We had kids that left item types blank; where they used to have ABCD choice, they now have to go in and input information, write a sentence or two, to explain their thinking, and we have a lot of kids that just left some blanks in there," said Dudenhoeffer. "We did a lot of work this year in making sure that they had access to the platform more often, and will take their benchmarks in there and will have opportunities to practice."

Another thing being done to aid test scores is encouraging reading and literacy at the earliest levels.

"Over the past two summers, we've purchased packets of books for out pre-K through second grade students," said Stewart. "This is an early literacy initiative that we feel is much needed here within our community to help develop that love of reading amongst our kids."

Across all grade levels, 60 percent of students met the "Approaches Grade Level" threshold in Reading. In addition, reading and literacy is regarded by many to be the foundation of being able so succeed in all other subjects. Because of this, much emphasis is put on students being able to read.

"I'm really dedicated, committed to making sure that we get them to develop that love of reading," said Stewart. "If you can't read, you can't do math, you can't do science, you can't do social studies, so that has provided huge outcomes for us.

These books are free of charge to all GISD kids, no matter socioeconomic status. In addition to the books being sent home this past two summers, GISD has also recently purchased books to be sent home this spring semester.

"I was at the drive-thru at Braum's, and one of the parents recognized me coming through the drive-thru window," said Stewart. "She broke down in tears, saying how much she enjoyed the books, saying 'I think I enjoyed the books more than my kid,' because they didn't have books at home to read, so she appreciated the district purchasing those books ... It provided them Sith a book that her and her child could sit down and then read together."

Another way the school is encouraging students to read is through events like the Read Across Gainesville event this Saturday. This event, happening in conjunction with Dr. Seuss's birthday and the Read Across America campaign, encourages kids of all ages to read. This Saturday's event is at the GHS indoor practice facility from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and will have free books and activities for all ages.

TEA lawsuit

This year's TAPR was presented without the A through F rating due to a lawsuit pending. A group of Texas schools have filed suit against the TEA due to new accountability ratings.

Usually, when state testing changes, the TEA gives a few years for schools to adjust to the new test before increasing expectations. However, this past year the TEA both changed the test and raised the accountability ratings at the same time. This leads many to believe schools would be hurt by low accountability ratings that inaccurately reflect the testing results.

While GISD was not one of the schools to file the suit, the board did approve a resolution at its last meeting on Feb. 20 saying that they agree with the school filing the suit and support a fair and transparent accountability system.

"We did not join the lawsuit with the 120 other school districts in the state of Texas, and my concern was just the cost," said Stewart. "We do not have the financial means as say a Houston ISD or Austin ISD, where they are dealing with multibillion dollar budgets ... so we elected to not get involved with the lawsuit and allow the bigger school systems to fight that battle."

This strategy of letting the bigger schools carry the lawsuit has created a misconception that only the bigger schools see this as an issue.

"The commissioner ... has gone back and said there's only 120 school districts that joined the lawsuit; that represents 1.9 million of the 5.5 million students that are in public schools here in Texas," said Stewart. "That's 120 that paid, but there's about 1,200 in support of. By passing this resolution, it says that although we did not join the lawsuit, we are in support of a fair accountability system and we do support the efforts of those districts that are fighting and involved in this lawsuit."