Paulette Chaffee discusses The Los Angeles Unified School District adding seven days to the school calendar starting next fall.

FULLERTON, CA, UNITED STATES, May 18, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Los Angeles Unified School District is adding seven days to the school calendar starting next fall. As life-long educator Paulette Chaffee explains, those additional days will provide professional development opportunities for staff as well as accelerated learning for students.

Approved by a school board vote held on April 26, the new school calendar will be implemented for the 2022-23 school year. The next school year will now end on June 15, 2023.

Four of those extra days will provide students with accelerated learning opportunities to provide more academic support to students who need it. The other three days will be dedicated to professional development for the district's teachers. They will be scheduled for the three days in August that precede the first classroom instruction day.

All of the days will be considered optional for both students and teachers.

The extra days for students will be held on four different Wednesdays throughout the year -- one each in October, December, March, and April. By spacing the days out like this, LAUSD officials said it would give staff time to see where students were in terms of progress so that they could provide the proper extra support.

Teachers and staff who attend the extra support days for students or the professional development days will be due additional compensation. According to the district, the cost of these extra days will be $122 million, which will come from the additional funding the district received for the year.

Paulette Chaffee pointed out that many community members voiced a concern that the extra funding wasn't being used on more staff. However, LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho explained that it couldn't be used for that purpose since it will sunset two years from now.

In other words, it's not long-term funding that could support long-term costs.

As a lifelong educator, Paulette Chaffee knows the value of extra instruction and professional development days, especially if they are targeted to individual student needs.

One of the most significant issues facing the LAUSD, and public education at large, is the lack of equity and inclusivity. The hope is that these seven additional instruction days could work to bridge the gap.

Paulette Chaffee earned her Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of Redlands in Communicative Disorders. She has also earned a California Lifetime Teaching Credential.

She has worked as both a speech therapist and teacher in public schools and a speech therapist in hospitals and clinics.

In a step in the right direction toward inclusion, Carvalho said community input would be considered when the LAUSD maps out what the acceleration days for students would look like. At this point, the exact format for those days has not been crafted.

Jessica Brown
Mercury News Media
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