Professional Learning days with the Anglophone East School District will be returning to full days for the upcoming school year.
For the current year, the District tried a new system that involved half days..
But Superintendent Gregg Ingersoll says after an evaluation and response from teachers and parents, they’ve decided to transition back to the old system.
“After talking to parents and educators, we are going to go back to what we were doing before. We are going to regroup, and may consider other options. There are other models that are being used in other areas of the province that we are going to take a look at.”
He says they plan to look at a system that Francophone South is currently using, “Having students go home, instead of a half day, they’ll go home an hour early a couple of times a month to give teachers more time during the school day, to have some time for preparation. Then it is not as disruptive.”
Some of the pros with the half day system included the fact that students were in class everyday, whereas with the full days, they are missing days. But the cons included daycare and bussing issues.
“It’s challenging, when you have a large school district, lots of schools and shared bussing. For teachers, having a half day can be difficult. It’s comparable to closing in the middle of the day due to a snowstorm, you don’t accomplish everything you would normally accomplish. The teachers do appreciate the opportunity to get together, but we just have to figure out the best way to do it,” Ingersoll says.
