I got a chance to talk with Diane Vespa regarding Ken Hinton’s announcement today. She had gone to the district’s offices at 10:30 to attend the press conference, and I wanted to hear what she thought of Ken Hinton’s latest plan. Imagine my surprise when she told me she wasn’t allowed into the press conference.

“You can’t go in,” she was told. “This is for press only.”

So Diane didn’t know any more about Hinton’s plan than I did — that is, she only knew what had been reported so far in the press. I suppose there’s nothing unusual, per se, about a press conference being restricted to press only. But here Diane was the only private citizen at the press conference, she’s the leader of the District 150 Watch group that has been trying to work with board members and administrators to find an alternative to the 45-minute school-day cut that was approved back on May 5, and she’s a parent of two District 150 primary school students. What purpose did denying her access to the press conference serve? Were they afraid she would be belligerent and disruptive or something? And why wouldn’t parents be welcomed by the school administrator when he’s announcing a new proposal that is supposed to be so beneficial to their children?

This episode illustrates all too well the school administration’s insulary nature. They don’t include the parents in making important educational decisions. They simply make decisions in isolation and then take a defensive posture toward anyone that would question them. It’s kind of ironic that they see the value of collaboration when it comes to teacher preparation, but they see no value in collaborating with parents on issues affecting their own children’s education.

One thing that concerns Diane is a comment she heard repeated by several members of the press. Evidently, Hinton made a point of saying he’s recommending this change because he recognizes “it’s been hard on people’s schedules” and on the schedules of “working parents.” Vespa wonders if Hinton is missing the point.

“When they [District 150] try to reduce it down to a babysitting issue, it shows a clear lack of understanding of the parents’ concerns,” Vespa said. “If they think parents are upset about this simply because it interferes with their work schedules, that’s offensive. We’re engaged in this because we care about the quality of education that our children are getting.”

Hinton apparently presented the new plan predominantly from a scheduling perspective, without addressing how this plan will help improve student achievement. Yet student achievement is the primary concern. Hinton can’t just write this protest off as being about child care and scheduling. He needs to show how cutting instructional time at schools that are already failing to meet adequate yearly progress (AYP) is going to help those children achieve more. Or to put it another way, how will adding common prep time more than compensate for the corresponding loss of instructional time each week?

It’s easy to hide from parents by kicking them out of press conferences, but they can’t hide from the issues.

District 150 Superintendent Ken Hinton is now proposing a new plan. Instead of cutting 45 minutes out of every school day, he’s proposing to cut 90 minutes out of Wednesdays. Under this new plan, children would be dismissed at 1:45 p.m. on Wednesdays, but teachers would stay and use that time for common prep.

Let’s compare apples to apples here. Per week, this means that instead of cutting 3.75 hours from the students’ school day, they would be cutting only 1.5 hours. Per day, this means that instead of cutting 45 minutes, they would be cutting an average of 18 minutes. I suppose this is Hinton’s way of trying to meet parents halfway — in fact, 60% of the way, since he’s restoring 2.25 hours of the 3.75 he was originally planning to cut.

Granted, 18 is better than 45. But it doesn’t resolve the issue. Under this plan, we would still have kids in failing schools attending less time each week. We’d still have fifth-graders in primary schools getting 18 minutes less per day (54 hours over the course of a 180-day school year) than fifth-graders in middle schools.

It looks like Mr. Hinton is on the right track — he just needs to go the other 40% of the way.

A press conference has been called for today at 10:30 a.m. at District 150 offices. Superintendent Ken Hinton will be addressing the 45-minute reduction in primary school schedules.