More time for teachers to team up in District 196?

Talk about it

The Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan School District is looking for ways to clear more time for teachers to work together.

On Monday, superintendent Jane Berenz presented a proposed modification to next year’s school calendar that would give teachers three additional days to collaborate. The change also creates time for elementary school teachers to get to know their students before the school year begins, and to learn which students are likely to need extra help and which will need additional challenges.

Elementary school teachers currently assess their students during the early days of the school year. Berenz said the proposed calendar change will allow them to do that work without having to simultaneously run a classroom.

To make up for the additional days teachers would work prior to the start of the school year the elementary year would end two days earlier than the rest of the district.

“We don’t have the dollars to add days,” Berenz said Monday. “If we could have added days for teachers without taking away from students, we would have done that.”

Berenz has been presenting the proposed calendar changes to parent and teacher groups around the district. She said response has typically been positive.

“As you start the conversation, people are a little bit leery, because it’s different,” she said. “By the end of the conversation people are wondering why we didn’t do this earlier, because it makes so much sense.”

The District 196 School Board will vote on the proposed calendar change at its next meeting Feb. 27.

Tags: school district 196, news, education