Photo by Tiffany Szerpicki

Photo by Tiffany Szerpicki

The prospect of many California public school students experiencing a shorter school year was heightened by the release on Wednesday of a grim report from the Legislative Annotator's Office predicting a severe budget shortfall.

The bad news comes just as several districts were able to restore days they had previously trimmed from their instructional calendar, co-ordinate to a just-completed EdSource survey of the state's thirty largest districts.

EdSource found that 18 of the state'south 30 largest districts still have the once-standard 180-mean solar day instructional twelvemonth. Eight of those districts restored days this school year. A dozen have less than a 180-mean solar day year, with nine of them having the 175-day minimum.

In 2008, the Legislature gave districts the option of reducing the school year to 175 days as a fashion to manage state-imposed upkeep cuts. Under legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in June, if revenues declined by $2 billion or more this yr, school districts' budgets would be cut, and schools would be given the right to reduce their instructional calendar to 168 days this yr.

Typically, the way a school district shortens its school year is by giving teachers unpaid furlough days. With the $2 billion shortfall at present a real possibility, any reduction in the school calendar would have to exist negotiated with teachers' unions.

A school year of 168 days would put California behind every state except Colorado and Michigan, although several states summate their school year in hours not days, and then comparison can be difficult.

Information technology would too put the country backside many industrialized countries. Australia, Netherlands and Singapore, for instance, offering a school year of 200 days. Korea'due south school year is 220 days, and Switzerland's is 225. In improver, recent cutbacks in summer school programs as documented in an before EdSource survey has further reduced instructional time in the United States.

Some districts told EdSource that they would have to reopen negotiations with their unions to revise contracts already agreed to if the automatic trigger were to take effect. Others, such every bit Stockton Unified, are already negotiating with their teachers' unions every bit to what will happen if the district experiences mid-twelvemonth cuts in state funding. "The main affair on the tabular array is furlough days," said Julie Penn, a deputy superintendent in Stockton.

It is not yet a done bargain that districts will compress their school year. For cuts to happen, the Department of Finance must effect a project by the heart of next month similar to the Legislative Analyst's. The Legislature could likewise act to change the way the cuts are imposed, but that would crave approval from Gov. Brownish.

But information technology seems increasingly likely that budget reductions of some kind volition have to be made, every bit Director of Finance Ana Matosantos asserted yesterday. If school cuts get imposed as called for in terminal June's budget legislation, districts could try to trim programs in whatever number of ways in lieu of shortening the schoolhouse year. However, cutting school days yields significant savings, which makes it more than appealing to school boards in lieu of chipping away at a diversity of schoolhouse programs.

Whatever occurs, it volition be painful, said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson in a statement yesterday.

"If the Legislative Analyst'due south forecast proves correct, mid-twelvemonth cuts will bring notwithstanding another painful blow to California's schools," Torlakson said.

How does California'due south schoolhouse twelvemonth compare with other states? Run into this report from the Education Commission of the States. For a chart on the length of the instructional year in California's largest thirty districts, come across this EdSource report.

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