Wakefield school days will be a little longer

By NEIL ZOLOT 

WAKEFIELD — School days will be five minutes longer in the upcoming 2024-24 year, at least through January. “We’ll give it a try and see if it works,” School Committee member Pete Davis said during their video-conference only meeting Tuesday, July 30.

Time will be added to the end of the day at the high school and elementary level, pushing dismissal from 2:05 to 2:10 at Wakefield Memorial High School and 2:45-2:50 at the elementary schools. At Galvin Middle School, however, time will be added to the beginning of the school day. As a result, home room will start at 7:45 a.m. not 7:50, allowing the day’s first class to start 5 minutes earlier as well or time to be added elsewhere, perhaps the What I Need academic support block or a school assembly. A warning bell would still ring at 7:40. The school day would still end at 2:15 p.m.

The changes would push the buses leaving the high school from 2:10 to 2:15, with no changes in the morning and buses leaving elementary schools from 2:45-2:50, also with no changes in the morning. “The benefit is more instructional time, but any change affects other school levels and the whole district,” Superintendent Doug Lyons pointed out. “If we add 5 minutes at the end of the school day at Galvin, it leads to the potential of buses getting to the elementary schools late.”

He has plans to report back to the School Committee on the success or lack thereof of the plan early next year. 

“It will take time to learn about this,” he feels.

At the outset of the meeting in Public Comment, Wakefield Education Association president and high school social studies teacher Jessica Cummings said they plan to hold community Zoom meetings similar to the ones the School Committee instituted during the pandemic to inform citizens of what they do. “We’re limited in our exposure to the public, but we are the most ‘hands-on’ employees in town,” she said. “The community isn’t made aware of the collaborative work we do with the administration.”

“I appreciate the work teachers do in the off-season,” School Committee Chairman Stephen Ingalls reacted.

Cummings would also like to see a regular School Committee meeting agenda item for a WEA report, similar to the one for a report from the Student Representative to the Committee. “It feels like School Committee meetings involve all stakeholders except the union,” she said.

Cummings also reported the WEA would like to increase communication with the School Committee and administration in general. “We’re invested in building a positive relationship,” she said. “We’re looking to bridge the gap.”

After the meeting, she said the five extra minutes in the school day would help the school system meet requirements from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for “time on learning” and give high school another minute of passing time between classes. “It may seem arbitrary, but it will help manage transition time,” she feels.

She also said the issue came up in recent union contract negotiations in regard to an initial proposal to add 15 minutes. “We came to a compromise on the five minutes,” she reported.

“Adding five instructional minutes to the student day was part of new teacher contract,” Daly confirmed. “In the course of 180 school days it will equal about 15 hours.”

Davis called the additional five minutes a “reasonable” way to extend the school day, possibly in reference to discussions in 2023 about changing starting times at the schools to have the high school start at 8:30 instead of 7:30 and have the elementary schools start at 7:30 instead of 8:40. At a School Committee meeting June 27, 2023, then-Student Representative Alexis Manzi cited information from the American Academy of Pediatrics, start times in nearby communities and results of a student survey she conducted indicating a later start time at the high school will “align teen bodies with their sleep patterns.”

She also said starting at 7:30 deprives students of sleep, leading to them sleeping in buses and cars on the way to school, having car accidents if they’re driving, sleeping in their first classes, depression, lower grades and engagement in risky behavior, especially METCO students coming from Boston, many of whom leave their homes before 6.

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In other developments, Assistant Superintendent Kara Mauro was granted a new contract. “I love working in Wakefield and am excited to stay on,” she said.