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All
four school boards in the Greater Sudbury Area will be closed on
February 18,
2008
to comply
with the statutory holiday that has been recently declared by the
Province
of
Ontario
. This
holiday has received mixed reactions from all segments of the general
population and may take several years to be fully appreciated. The biggest
challenge, it seems, is that not all businesses and organizations will be
closed on that day; therefore, many parents will be working. The fact that
schools will be closed will actually impact upon many families which will
now have to make alternative supervision arrangements for their children.
This is not always the easiest thing for parents to do.
Another problem that may not come into play this year, but will
certainly come into play in future years, deals with the number of days in
a normal school year calendar. Under law, school boards must schedule a
total of 194 days for classroom instruction, professional activities and
exams.
As a result of the new Family Day Holiday which just passed through
the provincial legislature late in 2007, the 2007-2008 school year will be
reduced by one to 193. It would appear that the number of classroom days
will be reduced by one to accommodate this Family Day.
For example, at the secondary school level, the 2007-2008 school
year calendar included 178 days during the year when students were
expected to attend class for lessons. Another 6 days were designated as
Professional Activity Days. The other 10 days are days that are put aside
for exams, with five in January and another five in June. It looks as if
the number of classroom instruction days will be reduced to 177 to comply
with the new holiday.
At the elementary school level, the 2007-2008 school year calendar
included 188 days during the year when students were expected to attend
class for lessons. The other 6 days were designated as Professional
Activity Days. Once again, it looks as if the number of instruction days
will be reduced to 187 to comply with the new holiday.
Some school boards have pointed out that the holiday may actually
save them a small bit of money on costs such as transportation, lights,
heat, and water use.
However, there are others who point out that since all teachers and
staff will receive their regular pay for the holiday, there will be no
savings in that respect, even though the number of instructional days has
been reduced by one. Critics of the holiday are stating that the Family
Day holiday is costing the taxpayers millions of dollars in lost
productivity just through school boards and government offices alone
because employees are being paid for staying at home.
A number of parents are upset that since they may be required to
work, they will incur additional costs for day care or have to make other
arrangements to have their children looked after. Retail store owners are
upset because it is another day they will be closed for business and yet
they will have to pay their permanent employees for staying at home.
UPON REFLECTION:
The problem of payment for lost productivity will not continue in
the case of school boards. It may be a problem in other government offices
and in some businesses which remain open all year long, since statutory
holidays are included in the number of days in the school year calendar,
school boards will be required to work around the day when setting up the
calendar for the 2008-2009 school year.
This could end up creating a bit of another problem for parents and
teachers. For example, if school boards were required to “extend” the
school year to accommodate the Family Day, school boards in the
Sudbury
area would
have added June 30 to their calendar. That would have meant that the
students would have remained in school one day longer, exams would have
been delayed by a day, and teachers would have been required to come back
to school for one day after the weekend for a P.A. day to complete the
year. It would have resulted in certain inconveniences that could be lived
with.
However, next year it may be necessary to begin classes prior to
Labour Day to fit in all of the 194 days. As it stood prior to the Family
Day declaration, there was not a lot of flexibility with respect to the
days upon which you could place school days. Now with one more day taken
out of that mix, it will be even tighter.
Another challenge that is in store for school boards is what to do
with Day Care Companies and community groups that use their facilities all
year long. Community groups depend on using the space for their cultural
and recreational activities, while Day Cares must provide services to
their clients. Therefore, schools may be closed for instruction, but they
will still have to remain open for other purposes.
It seems as if we are coming closer and closer to the 24 / 7
community living model. There are so many implications with this model
that we cannot get into it at this point. Nevertheless, I won’t be the
first person to declare that perhaps a solution to the dilemma of lack of
accommodation space for an increasing population could be to maximize the
utilization of our existing facilities. For example, is there anything
wrong with scheduling “two” shifts in a school. One program can run
from
8 a.m.
to
2 p.m.
and the
other can operate from
2 p.m.
to
8 p.m.
Instead of
providing education to 600 students in one building, you would have room
to provide classes to 1200 students each day. There are obvious challenges
to this type of model, but if schools are going to meet the needs of
society, we may have to accept that society no longer operates on a
“steady day shift” model. This is a topic we will examine on another
day.
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