FEDERAL FUNDS URGE SCHOOLS TO EXTEND YEAR

A new federal law encourages public schools to move to a 210-day academic year.

Schools that do so will receive additional federal money.

Congress has allocated $72 million for the first year of the five-year program.

U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, D-Ill., was a key sponsors of the measure, believing a longer school year will improve elementary and secondary education.

"The schools that move to 210 days in order to qualify for the extra federal dollars will find that their students learn more and do better, whether they go onto college or not," he said.

Most schools operate basically on a 180-day school year.

Lengthening the school year to 210 days is the equivalent of adding two additional years of schooling by the 12th grade, he said.

But school superintendents say extending the school year is easier said than done.

Missouri law requires districts to hold school a minimum of 174 days.

Jackson has a 176-day school year, while Cape Girardeau students are in class 179 days.

The academic year for both districts generally runs from late August to early June.

Neither Jackson nor Cape schools are fully air conditioned.

A longer school year would mean sweltering classes for many students and teachers, they say.

Jackson Superintendent Wayne Maupin said a 210-day calendar amounts to almost year-round school when weekends, holidays and snow days are factored in.

Subtracting weekends from the calendar, there are about 20 school days each month.

Extending the school year another 34 days for Jackson students would actually add another month and a half to the academic calendar.

"If you factored in missed days for bad weather, you would easily be at the end of July," Maupin said.

The situation would be similar in Cape Girardeau.

Cape Girardeau Superintendent Dr. Neyland Clark views a 210-day school year as a step toward year-round schooling.

Clark said most of the Cape schools aren't air-conditioned.

In this part of the country, he said, air conditioning would be a necessity for a longer school year to work.

Erin Riches doesn't like the idea of a longer school year.

The Cape Girardeau Central High School senior said a longer school year would cut into family vacations and summer jobs, as well as leave students to sweat through their classes.

Cape Girardeau public school students already suffer through the heat at the start of classes each August.

"Typically, it is still in the 90s. It is downright miserable," she said.

Riches, the editor of the high school newspaper, said, "A better curriculum is really what you need rather than a longer school year."

The longer-school-year measure is part of the five-year reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, signed into law by President Clinton earlier this month.

Simon said the first-year funding of $72 million isn't a large amount in a nation of 45 million elementary and high school students.

But, he said, "It is enough to get school boards and school administrators across the nation talking about our problem."

Most industrial nations have longer school years than the United States.

In Japan, students go to school 243 days a year; in Germany, 240.

"Can we learn as much in 180 days as they do in 240 and 243? Obviously not," Simon said.

The 180-day school year was designed so students would be out of school in time to harvest crops, he pointed out.

"Even in small-town, rural America, where I live, that is not true for most young people," Simon said. "Our world has changed, but our educational system has not changed."

Clark said there has been a longstanding effort to move American schools to a longer academic year.

"I think we would look at anything that comes down the legislative pipeline, if it comes to help kids," the superintendent said.

But, he added, "You have to be careful that you don't get into a bureaucratic nightmare."

Many teachers take graduate course work in the summer.

A longer school year could make it more difficult for them to pursue advanced degrees.

In addition, both students and teachers need some time away from the classroom, Clark said.

"You've got to give those kids and teachers a break," he said, adding that it is easy for politicians to talk about a longer school year, as if that alone will improve education.

"It is a gesture of a quick-fix type of mechanism when there are no quick-fix solutions," Clark said.