Obama proposes longer school day, shorter summer breaks

[Lady's Human]

Okay, guys, this proposal just isn't going to happen for a number of reasons.

1) Budget. More classroom hours=more pay for teachers. Their salaries are based on an expected number of hours in the classroom. Increase the hours, the pay increases.

a) Facilities budgets: Increase the time in school, increases the time the facilities are in use. In turn it increases the maintenance budget.

b) Transportation budgets: More days=more bus trips=more maintenance and fuel costs.

c) School meal budgets: self explanatory, but if the kids are going to be in school past 4 PM, plan on eating dinner there. Given the hour +/- bus trip to and from the school, the lunch would have to expand from just lunch to breakfast, lunch and dinner.

2) Increased strain on personnel: increase hours, decrease off time=poor performance, unless you increase the personnel proportionally with the time increase, which leads to a budget explosion.

3) Parents, like me, who would tell the school board to stuff it if they decided the kids were going to be in school for 9+ hours. Ain't happening. I've already had discussions with the school administration about their curriculum, I would have no issue discussing this in a school board meeting.



The story is old, hasn't been heard from since the original speech, and is really a non-starter.


Marigold, may I ask where you pulled that article from? It's overly rosy in its outlook, sounds like someone has been drinking the koolaide of a special interest group or 20. More hours in school won't fix anything. More days in school won't fix anything.

More involved parents and less intrusive school policies would work wonders. Get back to teaching academics, get the hell out of the business of teaching morals and social programs in school, and leave parenting to the parents. That's my job, not Society's.

[Catlady711]

Sports are great but not if the child cannot read or write, sports should never come before grades. That however is what it has come too. And that is one reason our kids are not doing as well as those in other countries.

Get back to teaching academics, get the hell out of the business of teaching morals and social programs in school, and leave parenting to the parents. That's my job, not Society's.

Agree TOTALLY with both of you!!


Sadly our schools here are so sports focused, that they've built a new track, olympic sized pool, and a new football field but kids are still having to share books and some of those books are so old the kid's parents names are written in them. If they so much as talk about charging more for sports, limiting the number of sports a child can play in one year, or cutting things back in general, the parents get in a huge uproar.

In comparing my education to my husbands, he was taught ALOT more about history and historical figures than I was. In our school math was no longer a required class after 9th grade, my husband was required to take math all the way through H.S. Our school thought it was a wonderful idea to teach careers. The only thing they offered was white collar, high paying, desk job type careers and to work on the school paper you had to be an honor student, it wasn't an elective class.

I've also noticed children from other countries tend to be taught two languages from a very young age. Our schools won't even let you take the language classes until 9th or 10th grades.