The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

District discusses upping students' time in school

By Justin Berton

Sunnyvale School District parents won't find out if their kids will be spending more time at school next year until the new teachers' contract is settled, board members said at a special meeting Jan. 22.

The teacher's union and the school district could reach a tentative agreement as soon as Feb. 5 during closed session at the board's next meeting, according to Jed Cyr, spokesperson for the Sunnyvale Educators Association.

Cyr told parents at the meeting, "Our contract needs to be restructured or modified."

The district called the special meeting in order to get input from parents and teachers as to the length of the school day. The district has to decide how long the school days will be next year before the teachers' contract can be settled. Teachers have been negotiating the terms of their contract, which expired last summer.

Cyr said expanding the school day was one of the 26 points on the table for the contract, but he was unable to discuss specifics about the new contract.

The state requires that first- through third-grade students spend a minimum of 50,400 minutes in the classroom each year. Of the 23 districts in the county, 18 exceed this requirement. Sunnyvale and four others meet it.

Board president Linda Kilian said the district hasn't been able to afford going beyond the minimum requirements because it has been faced with reducing its budget by $8 million over the past 10 years due to state budget cuts.

"Every minute costs us money," Kilian said.

Now, Kilian said, the cuts have finally stopped.

Deputy Superintendent Ben Picard, who is compiling a survey comparing Sunnyvale to the other districts in the county, said the costs of expanding the school day or school year are yet to be determined.

Picard said Gov. Wilson's new budget proposal would fund seven additional days in the school year.

"We're finally seeing some resources become available for this," Picard said.

Parent Kathleen Bullene, whose fourth-grader attends Cumberland Elementary, shared a popular opinion among many parents at the meeting.

"It's frustrating that we're back to that same issue of not having enough money," she said. "It's not fair to ask the teachers to work more if they're not going to get paid more."

Bullene also said she is in favor of making the school day longer if a higher-quality curriculum can be implemented. "I'd like to see more things like band practice and foreign language classes added," she said.

A parent from the audience said she didn't care how the district expanded its day, just as long as it happened. "I want my child to go to school for as long as the children who have higher scores [on standardized tests]," she said.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, February 4, 1998.
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