Community Corner

Time Out: School Board Member Look at Options to Reduce Out of Class Time

A study at the end of the 2012-13 school year showed staff at some schools were spending in excess of 3 percent of their instruction time away from classrooms and the Board of Education is mulling options to reduce missed instruction time.

It may not seem like a lot of time out of class, but with a two-week study showing teachers missed more than 3 percent of potential instruction time at Kelley Elementary School, Kennedy Middle School and Southington High School, members of the Southington Board of Education are looking to make a change.


The board is considering options, including changing the calendar schedules to include more professional development time, in an effort to reduce the amount of time teachers are out of class during scheduled instruction time.

“It may not seem like a lot, but when you break it down over the course of a year it amounts to more than two full weeks of lost time for classes across the district,” said Board of Education member Zaya Oshana. “That’s a lot of lost time. We owe it to the students and teachers to take a look at this and find a proper and feasible way to address this problem.”

A study conducted between May 13 and May 24, included in the PDF attached above, looked into the time lost during scheduled instruction periods at each of Southington’s 12 public schools. Elementary schools lost an average of 2.19 percent, middle schools lost 2.13 percent and high school instruction lost 3.43 percent.

The biggest areas of missed instruction time included Southington High School, where teachers missed 14,000 minutes totaling 3.54 percent, Kennedy Middle School with teachers missing 5,800 minutes, or 3.52 percent, and Kelly Elementary School where 2,600 minutes, or 3.17 percent, was missed.

For school board members including Oshana, whose family has a long history in education, the numbers are of great concern.

Oshana noted that in looking at the two weeks and spreading the figures out over the course of a year, the district is currently losing 143.5 days of instruction time every two weeks, a total of 5,740 days per year. Of this time, 2,500 days are lost at the high school, 1,200 at the middle schools and 2,040 at the elementary school level.

“We need to do our due diligence,” he said. “Obviously, there is a problem here. As more mandates continue to come in front of us requiring additional teacher development and review, this will only increase. The most important aspect of learning is teachers and instruction time. We need to find solutions.”

In addition, a solution could help cut costs for the district, he said, by reducing substitute hours – a line item that was nearly $250,000 over budget in 2012-13.

School Superintendent Joseph V. Erardi Jr. said the numbers were affected by several factors, including Asset Building Classroom training at Kennedy and field trips at Southington High School and Kelley, but he also noted that the figures warrant future discussions.

“The next question is how we can make positive change without compromising learning and teacher development,” Erardi said. “There is enough information here to warrant future discussions of change that could include solutions such as providing a short day each month to allow for professional development outside of classroom instruction time.”

Erardi said the school administration will move forward in developing a schedule that would include time without monthly development, as well as a calendar that would include one day a month with students being dismissed an hour early to allow for that professional development.

The plan must also address substitute needs, Erardi said, by finding more efficient ways to bring qualified and dedicated substitutes to the classroom. In many cases, teacher absences in 2012-13 were caused by sickness with a bad flu season, he said, making it more difficult to address the issue without using substitutes.

“This is a discussion that will continue,” Board of Education Chairman Brian Goralski said. “We need to continue to monitor time out of class, we need to address it in a manner where we get more bang for the buck and we need to look at it from a curriculum and development perspective.”

“It’s something we will continue to monitor closely and make adjustments to address,” he said.

Make sure to like Southington Patch on Facebook and follow on Twitter for breaking news, daily updates and more!


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here