White Oak’s half-day schedule upsets parents

Every Wednesday, students at White Oak Elementary School in Westlake Village are dismissed at 12:25 p.m., about one-and-a-half hours earlier than the other four days of the week. The class instruction that students lose on Wednesdays is called “banked” time because the time that students miss is tacked on to the other days of the week. Teachers use the extra time on Wednesday afternoons to work on classroom curriculum and organize events and activities.

All of the elementary schools in the Las Virgenes Unified School District bank time during the week. On shortened days such as Wednesdays, children are let out of class for recess, and they often go home for lunch.

But Dr. Abbey Irshay, White Oak principal, encountered a problem with banked time when she learned that federal regulations require a lunch period to be offered to students who ride the bus—regardless of the time that they were dismissed.

In mid-January, the school was required to add back a 15-minute lunch period on Wednesdays, in addition to the standard 20-minute recess.

The revised schedule upset several parents because they say 15 minutes of instructional time was taken away from their children and not made up elsewhere in the schedule.

“My real problem is not with the banking day . . . but with lost minutes that affect the amount of time the children are in the classroom for instruction,” said Tiffany Garrison, who has three children at the school.

California mandates the minimum number of minutes for schools for the year, said Ann Eklund, the school district’s director of early education.

Even with the new schedule at White Oak, Eklund said the primary grades will still end up with 510 minutes over the minimum, and 930 minutes over the minimum requirements for grades four and five.

“The White Oak staff did consider adding to the day,” Eklund said. “However, parents have the Wednesday pick-up schedule already in place and the staff felt that asking all of the parents in grades one to five to change schedules—activities, baby sitting arrangements—would cause much stress for parents when it could be addressed with the inclusion of a short lunch break.”

In order resolve the dispute over classroom minutes, Irshay tried to strike a compromise with state officials. She wanted to offer sack lunches to those students who ride the bus, but regulations forbid it.

“It’s a federal requirement I have to fulfill—the opportunity for lunch,” Irshay explained. “Voluntary lunch didn’t meet that requirement because of kids who ride the bus.”

School officials said a total of 330 instructional minutes will be lost by the end of the year with the implementation of the 15minute lunch break every Wednesday.

Next year, Irshay said the 15 minutes lost to lunch will be redistributed on other school days.

“In general our parents have been supportive of banking time and know that it is valuable for teachers, Eklund said. “Causing them to change their schedule mid-year for a mistake that was made at the school district level would not be in the best interest of building positive school/community relations.”

Garrison not only was miffed about the lost minutes, but also felt the communication between the administration and parents could have been better. Garrison said she and other parents received a letter about the added lunch after the school had already implemented the change.

Garrison believes the problem could have been addressed differently. She recommended combining recess with lunch.

But according to Eklund, “Recess is designed to support student learning. Different age children need breaks at different times. We know from much of the brain research that more short breaks are probably an advantage. Waiting for recess or making it later would not be educationally sound.

The White Oak staff discussed this together before the final decision was made,” Eklund said.