Updated: Pat-Med May Lengthen Class Time

Earlier school days with slightly longer class times are being proposed for the Patchogue-Medford School District, and will be discussed on June 13 at South Ocean Middle School, 225 South Ocean Avenue in Patchogue.

The school district announced on their website that a special meeting to discuss proposed changes to the arrival and dismissal times for all district schools for the 2013-2014 school year is taking place in the school's cafetorium at 7 p.m.

According to a PDF of the proposed schedule posted on the district website, that is also in the media gallery of this post, student bus arrival would begin 15 minutes earlier than the current schedule across the high school and middle schools (ie: current 7:20 a.m.-7:47 a.m. high school arrivals would be 7:05 a.m.-7:15 a.m.). Elementary bus arrival moves 20 minutes earlier from 9:10 a.m. to 8:50 a.m. 

School dismissal would also be earlier, with the high school moving from a 1:50 p.m. dismissal to a 1:36 p.m., middle schools moving from 2:39 p.m. to 2:19 p.m. and elementary schools moving from 3:15 p.m. to 2:55 p.m.

The proposed schedule adds class time in some cases. This is as much as 16 minutes for the high school, which under the current schedule is a six-hour instructional day starting first period at 7:50 a.m. through a 1:50 p.m. dismissal. This changes to a six-hour, sixteen-minute instructional day running from 7:20 a.m.-1:36 p.m. under the proposed schedule. 

Lori Cannetti, assistant superintendent of curriculum, clarified to Patch Thursday that students will actually remain at the school for the same amount of time they currently do, but periods of down time at the start of the day between bus arrival and before class are being reduced and allocated into instructional periods. At the high school level that is six-hours, 30-minutes from bus arrival to dismisal and six-hours, five-minutes at the elementary level, Cannetti said.

Middle school sticks with the current six-hour, 19 minute instructional day in the proposed schedule. 

Elementary school adds five-minutes, moving from a five-hour, 45 minute instructional schedule to a five-hour, 50 minute schedule.

Under the proposed schedule at the high school the first period would be 47 minutes long and all other periods would be about 42 minutes long. Currently, according to the PDF, first period is about 45 minutes long and all other periods are about 40 minutes long. 

Middle school and elementary school class times are also tweaked in the proposed schedule, but class length times are similar. Elementary schools would lose the 10-minute period currently allotted from 3:05 p.m.-3:15 p.m., which presumably is rolled into the proposed earlier periods.

Teacher arrival moves 15 minutes earlier on the high school level from 7:15 a.m. to 7 a.m., 10 minutes later on the middle school level from 7:35 a.m. to 7:45 a.m. and 15 minutes later on the elementary level from 8:25 a.m. to 8:40 a.m.
 
The morning PDP/Extra Help period before school begins is eliminated in the proposed schedule for all schools, while the afternoon one is retained at the high school level and added to the middle school and elementary levels.

The district website says that the proposed schedule is currently only a proposal, and that the Board of Education and district administration are looking for community input at the meeting.

What are your thoughts on the proposed changes? Check out the PDF and the district website for more information, and talk about your thoughts by typing them in the comments section below.

Update June 6, 11:55 a.m.: Patch spoke with Lori Cannetti, the district's assistant superintendent of curriculum, who clarified to Patch that while the instructional time is increasing in the proposed schedule, it is allocated out of down time currently in the schedule. The change does not lengthen the actual time a student will be at school, but does increase the amount of class time. Wording in the article and the headline has been updated to reflect this.