More class time for students at 3 Seattle schools
May 14, 2010, 3:10 PM | Updated: Mar 28, 2011, 3:46 pm
Students at Hawthorne Elementary, West Seattle Elementary and Cleveland High School will have to spend more time in classes, beginning in the fall. It’s one of the strings attached to federal school improvement grants.
Students at the elementary schools will start the 2010-11 school year a week before other Seattle School District students. The first day of school at these schools will be Tuesday, August 31. For the rest of the district, September 8th is the first day of school. The school day for the elementary kids will start earlier too – beginning at 8:15 a.m. and ending at 2:40 p.m. By comparison, other Seattle elementary kids start at 9:20 and get out at 3:30.
In an announcement about the change today, the district says, “the extra days and minutes add up to more than 45 additional hours of instruction for students – a great benefit to students and families of these schools.”
At Cleveland High School, with three new academies, all students will have extra time to take the course work required for graduation. The school day at Cleveland will be 30 minutes longer than in previous years.
Beginning in September, Cleveland’s school day will start at 8:00 a.m. and end at 3:00 p.m. The district says the extra class time “will help accelerate learning for struggling students and provide opportunity for all students to take the array of interesting and challenging classes Cleveland will offer.”
The three schools targeted for the $5.76 million in federal funds are among the lowest-performing in the district. The grant requires the Seattle schools to implement one of the four “turnaround” plans outlined by the federal department of education.
