Clinton Central School Corporation officially released its second survey regarding the proposed modified day for the 2024-2025 school year to lead the staff to a final decision.
The corporation released the initial survey in February to gauge the Clinton Central community’s feedback on implementing a modified day for students on a designated day of the week for the 2024-2025 school year and beyond with the intention to foster ongoing professional development for the staff and enhance the corporation’s ability to analyze student data for targeted interventions.
High School Principal Tom Hughes and Elementary School Principal Aubree Smith stated that the corporation is in the final stages of the decision-making process and will utilize the second survey to create a final verdict.
One main goals of a modified day are to increase professional development for staff by providing dedicated time for professional development and allow teachers the opportunity to conduct collaborative planning to ensure the best possible outcome in the classrooms.
“What we’re looking for is that uninterrupted time for teachers and staff members to get some more professional development so that they can continue to stay up on the latest research and latest trends in education and teaching,” Hughes said. “A big part of it is collaborative planning and having time for teachers to meet together, especially over here at the high school where all my math teachers can sit around a table and talk about student successes, student weaknesses, things that we can do to support and close some of those learning gaps.”
Another goal of the modified days is to provide teachers and other faculty with the time necessary to discuss student performance and the means to increase the opportunities available for the students for all grades at Clinton Central.
“Looking at more than just a pass rate but looking at specific students and their abilities, individual targets and individual standards and making sure that when we find a kid who is struggling, who has more questions, who isn’t showing mastery or proficiency that we’re able to in a very short time provide that individualized support for them and their learning needs,” Hughes said.
Currently, Smith stated that teachers were given six professional days during the year with substitute teachers covering the classes for professional development, teachers arrived 30 minutes before their contract time on Tuesday and Thursday mornings for staff meetings, committee meetings and professional development, and teaching teams had 80 uninterrupted minutes per week to schedule and hold PLC meetings. Smith stated that the modified learning days could possibly alleviate the need for some of the uninterrupted time and time set aside by the teachers as well as ensuring that the professional development and data analyzing are able to be completed.
Hughes stated that the current plan at the Junior High School are for math and ELA teachers to plan lessons for other teachers to utilize during the eighth period homeroom and teachers to meet before or after schools to receive copies of the lessons to discuss with the students. At the High School, students are able to visit teachers during SRT to receive additional help and ask questions. For both the Junior and Senior High Schools, staff meetings are held 30 minutes prior to the contract time on Tuesdays with curriculum planning time only occurring by pulling teachers during the school day and utilizing substitute teachers to cover the classrooms.
“If we had this time each Friday or each week, that would allow teachers to step in before kids were failing or before we had kids that were too far behind,” Hughes said. “A lot of times what we find is it’s the midterm or it’s the end of the grading period before we’re really sitting down and diving into that data just because we don’t have the time right now to do it each week.”
With Indiana Code only requiring five hours of instructional time for grades 1 through 6 and six hours of instructional time for grades 7 through 12, Smith stated that the corporation currently exceeds the instructional time required exponentially, being over 360 hours over the required time for Kindergarten through sixth grade and 180 hours over the required time for seventh through senior year. A modified day 35 times per school year would still have the corporation exceeding the requirements.
Hughes stated that the first survey revealed that 72% of respondents were in favor of a modified day, but the responses were spread between different options, such as early releases, delayed starts and 2-hour delays.
The next steps for the decision will be the current survey, reviewing results, finalizing proposal based on feedback, sending the final proposal to the school board in April, applying for 1003 flexibility waiver from the Indiana Department of Education and announcing the decision to the community.
The three options will now be 1-hour delay, 2-hour delay and early release.