The Texas Education Agency has asked Lancaster district officials to answer 15 exhaustive questions about their proposed four-day school week that could spell the end of the controversial plan. School board member Carolyn Morris, an opponent of the plan, says it is her understanding that after receiving the questions from the state agency, district administrators decided to postpone for a year attempts to launch the new calendar.
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EARLIER: The dispute over the Lancaster (Texas) school district's proposed four-day school week has reached the state capital as supporters and critics aired their views to the Texas education commissioner. Meanwhile, the Texas Education Agency is considering whether to send a team of auditors to the school district to check on worrisome financial data. Superintendent Larry Lewis says the district has "strong instructional reasons" for converting to a four-day week, but school board member Carolyn Morris told the commissioner that the proposal was ill-conceived and formulated with little participation from parents and taxpayers.
Click here to read The Dallas Morning News article.
Texas education officials have confirmed that the Lancaster school district has formally requested permission to scrap the required 180-day school calendar and replace it with a four-day schedule starting next month. District officials expect to make their case to the Texas Education Agency in person within a week. Four-day schedules are rare, but they are more common in small, rural districts. In November 2005, Panther Creek, a rural district in Central Texas with fewer than 200 students, requested a waiver so it could switch to a four-day school week. Then-commissioner Shirley Neeley rejected the proposal because she felt she didn't have enough time to rule on it and feared that launching a four-day week in the middle of the school year would be disruptive.
Click here to read The Dallas Morning News article.
An outpouring of parents has told the Lancaster (Texas) school board that they don't want the district to switch to a four-day school week. Many parents at the emotion-charged meeting say the proposal--which would take effect this fall and is being presented as a one-year pilot program--would allow unsupervised students to get into trouble while home alone Fridays and would force parents to spend hundreds of dollars on child care for young children.
Click here to read The Dallas Morning News article.
Click here to read the Lancaster District's proposal,"Four Days to Exemplary" (PDF)
