Swan River extends school day five minutes
The school day will be five minutes longer for students at Swan River School as of Nov. 26. In order to meet state requirements for instructional time throughout the year, the Swan River school board approved to extend the day until 3:15 p.m. during their regular meeting on Nov. 13.
State regulations require increased amounts of instructional time at higher grade levels. While kindergarten through third-grade was well within state regulations, fourth- and fifth-grade fell short. The major jump in instructional time is between third- and fourth-grade when it goes from 720 hours to 1,080 hours.
Previously, fourth-grade students at Swan River had an afternoon recess that was guided by a teacher and counted as a type of instructional time. But in order to meet instructional time requirements it had to be removed.
“I didn’t feel comfortable with that, knowing the state is regulating those (hours) more than they used to, so I wanted to make sure they were having real instructional time,” principal Marc Bunker said. “I think if you have a teacher there and the class sticks together and plays kickball that can count since it is like a PE-type period, but your typical recess with someone on duty and kids run around and play, you can’t count that.”
But, there were concerns about removing fourth-grade’s afternoon recess since it meant an extended period of instruction without a break.
“For me, I think it is more productive to send them out to play knowing when they come in they will be ready to listen,” board member Dawn Dowellgrim said. “I really wish we had added a week and a half to the calendar, we are fixing a problem but not really fixing it by adding five minutes. I think we messed up and it’s not fair to take it out on the kids.”
In order to give the fourth-grade class a break in the afternoon, PE and music was moved to the afternoon.
Changes in scheduling can be tricky, Bunker said it creates a ripple effect for all the other classes, and the board was faced with another schedule change that would require additional shuffling. The school’s band teacher, Adam Tunnell, could only continue teaching band if the class was moved to first period to accommodate his other job.
The timing for the band schedule change worked to the school’s advantage since they were already moving things around for the fourth-graders.
In other Swan River School news:
• The school is a finalist in the Clorox Power A Bright Future online voting competition. If the school wins they will receive a $50,000 grant, which they plan to use to buy iPads for the students. Votes are also broken into categories; Swan River School is under “Explore,” so even if they don’t win the top prize they could still win $25,000 in their category.
“I saw it on TV and then I checked the website to see if it is legit, so the PTO moms and I wrote a summation of our wishes in under 1,000 words and we did it in poetic form,” Shelly Emslie said.
Votes can be made online at https://powerabrightfu ture.clorox.com until Dec. 19.