Hey, good news! Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Public School (CPS) board are working hard to make Chicago kids smarter. They’re starting by pushing hard for an extended school day that’s 90 minutes longer and two extra weeks of school per year. This was not the first call for an extended school day, the most recent of which was a largely ignored health initiative calling for schools to extend their day by a half an hour to restore much-needed recess breaks. Chicago area schools have one of the shortest school days in the nation and both CPS and Mayor Emanuel seem to believe that having students’ butts in chairs longer is the most important contributing factor toward educational excellence.
The standard of measurable education in Chicago public schools is continually falling behind that of other similarly-sized cities. Giving students an extra 90 minutes of education a day seems like a great way to close the gap. However, what will those students be doing with those extra 90 minutes? Learning how to take standardized tests more effectively? Generating a slightly higher testing average so that their school can earn more money toward someday reinstating the painfully absent art, music and physical education classes? Simply keep from
closing down and having to fire all of the teachers?
With the focus of CPS schools today being heavily skewed toward test-taking skills, piling more mind-numbingly in- active time onto young students may not result in any actual increase in learning, Which may further frustrate already over-stressed, under-exercised students. Learning by rote to regurgitate specific facts on demand does not increase overall comprehension. Un- less the infrastructure is changed from one where standardized-testing is paramount to one where the actual content comprehension and utilization is assessed, those extra 90 minutes a day may not be such good news for Chicago area students. And when students are upset, parents will be too.
To pay for that extra 90 minutes of work the teachers will be doing, Chicago property taxes are increasing by 2.4 per- cent. While the CPS board was voting to increase property taxes, they were also voting to cancel the four percent annual raises teachers get to cover the rise in cost of living, reflect their hard work and dedication to education. Instead, the teachers’ unions are being offered a two percent salary increase incentive if the teachers agree to work those 90 extra minutes. That’s a net loss of two percent pay for agreeing to work an extra 7.5 hours a week on top of their regular work day and the countless extra hours teachers put in before and after school tutoring and lesson-planning.
Plus, the CPS board still has a $716 mil- lion budget deficit to close the gap on for 2012, so that means more teachers will lose their jobs, more schools will have to close or consolidate and class sizes will increase. The budget cuts and property value based tax inevitably hit the low-income aldermanic wards in Chicago the hardest, which means
fewer resources for those who need them most. So, those extra 90 minutes a day are still good news as long as you are not poor, a student, teacher, parent, homeowner or plan to be one of the aforementioned someday.
But look on the bright side. Kids will be in school an extra 90 minutes a day, allowing parents to work that much longer to pay off the extra $84 average property tax increase per household on top of everything else they pay for.