Around campus, students have been hearing about the teachers’ campaign for 180 days of school. In order to achieve this, the district would need to get rid of ski week, or Furlough Week. Furlough week falls sometime in February, and just a month later is Spring Break.
Cutting out two weeks of learning makes it increasingly difficult for teachers to finish all the material that they need to get through before the AP tests or the end of the school year, creating a mess of both stressed teachers and stressed students.
Rather than having an Edline strike, as was previously planned, teachers are planning on just not doing the things that they had done for free in the past, such as after-school review sessions for AP tests and helping out with clubs.
“Students don’t realize it but teachers really are needed in order for clubs to run properly,” said sophomore Lauren Sanders. Without teachers helping out with clubs, it will be a lot harder for students to find places to meet, and students will have to run their clubs entirely on their own.
“Our teachers are always so helpful, and I really think they deserve the extra money, especially since we have some saved up,” said junior Amanda Stefan.
The district has 11 million dollars saved up from all the budget cuts, and now teachers are asking for that money to be given to them.
Cutting out one week of school may not seem like a big deal–not money-wise or school-wise–but in actuality, it all adds up. Having Furlough Week and then Spring Break really makes it hard on both students and teachers because teachers lose a lot of teaching time while students lose a lot of learning time. This is especially detrimental because of their positioning right before STAR tests and AP exams. In addition, cutting one week’s pay out of a teacher’s salary is between three and five percent of a teacher’s total pay.
“It looks like things have stabilized and the economy is looking a lot better now so it’s frustrating that the district isn’t even really thinking about giving us the money,” said PVHS teacher, Mr. Harley.
Two years ago, when the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District (PVPUSD) had its first Furlough Week, teachers were more willing to give up a week’s pay because they understood the financial troubles that were plaguing both the district and the state. However, now that the economy is beginning to look up, they want that money back and they want the school days back as well.
“We’re the only district in the area that doesn’t have 180 days,” said Mr. Harley. This makes it harder for Palos Verdes High to compete with the other schools in the area simply because of the lack of school days.
In addition, losing a week of school can be extremely detrimental to teachers as well as students.
“My chemistry class had to rush through the last few chapters of material. If we hadn’t had those days off, it would have been a lot easier for my teacher to get through the material before the AP, and the whole class would probably feel a lot less stressed right now,” said junior Stevie Lillington. Before last year, students would have had an extra 2 or 3 days in the classroom. That’s 4 to 6 hours of more learning. Those hours would definitely help students, both for STAR and AP.
“For me, the problem isn’t the extra time. The problem is that whenever we go on breaks, I forget all the information that I learned before the break,” said junior Benison Waung.
Many students choose to go on vacation or decide to hang out with friends rather than study during breaks. Because of this, many students forget a lot of the information that they’ve learned before the break, and it makes it increasingly difficult for them to re-learn the material when the get back to school, especially because of the lack of time between Furlough Week and the AP exams and STAR tests.
Without teachers’ routine after-school review sessions and open classrooms during lunch like they had this year and years prior, students will be forced to study on their own and without as much help from their teachers. Studying in groups is often a lot more helpful than studying alone, and while students can still study in groups, they will lose the teacher aspect of it.
“I know that the teachers are trying to help and I know that they have good intentions with all of this, but I think they should go about this in a different way,” said junior Keshav Lalchandani.
By not holding after-school review sessions and doing other things that teachers currently do for free, it will be a lot harder for students to get the help that they need if they really want to succeed on their AP and STAR tests. Because of this, some students think that teachers need to approach this debacle in a different way.
Thus, whether or not the teachers are going to get the extra money is still up to debate, but after seeing the fight that the teachers are currently putting up, a lot of things could be changing at Palos Verdes High next year if the teachers don’t end up getting the money.